Seasonality in the Monarchs of the Kona Library

"It is our most modestly priced receptacle."

  The snorkeling in Kona had been uninspiring  after the holidays.  And then the surf came up.  Beaches were closed from La Jolla to Leo Carillo.  Well, those beaches were gleaned from Donny's eulogy near the end of the Big Lebowski. Part of the fun was the mental image of Steve Buscemi surfing.  And, of course, when Jeffrey Lebowski gets  a coating of Donny's ashes you just about fall out of your chair.  Especially if you've had too many White Russians.

   But seriously, just yesterday every beach under state control, from Mahukona to Ho'okena was closed. Luckily, Maude (aka the Redoubtlable SKG) and I had a fall back position.  In lieu of snorkeling we went to get our safety check.  This is our yearly chance to say hello to Bob at Dixon's 76 in the heart of beautiful downtown Kailua.  Bob is a heck of a gentleman and spending a few minutes with him is probably worth the 26 clams Hawaii charges for the safety check.  

   At any rate, Dixon's 76 backs onto the library, home to several crown milkweeds, which  for the last six or seven years have provided us hours of entertainment looking for Monarch caterpillars.  A month or so ago, we captured a caterpillar from those crown milkweeds, along with a few milkweed leaves, brought it back to Casa Ono, and watched him go chrysalis.  He emerged a couple weeks later, and weren't we proud parents!  After capturing a few photos of Manny the Monarch clinging to his now empty chrysalis, we opened the door and off he went.  Out to make his way in the world.  

    It is critical to this story to note that two or three weeks prior to this, there had been no caterpillars in this three plant stand of milkweeds.  Like the mamaki, the host plant to the Kamehameha Butterfly, which unlike North American nettles, grows as a sturdy shrub fifteen feet tall, crown milkweed bears little outward resemblance to the plant they call milkweed back in Minnesota.  This is a seriously big plant.  Some might call it a small tree.  It has thick trunks, a myriad of sturdy branches and countless leaves bigger than my hand.  So when we say there were no caterpillars, we are not talking about three tiny weeds, we are talking about thousands of large leaves and no caterpillars. 

   Back in November, about the time there were no caterpillars, Sandra had received a butterfly house for her birthday.  It would have been early December when we adopted Manny, the first occupant of Chateau Gris. At that time he was the only caterpillar on this stand of highly edible foliage.  Virtually every day of the year one sees monarchs flying around this group of crown milkweeds, but in November and December there were hardly any caterpillars.

Sandra is shocked by the devoured crown milkweed.

   Before we move on, I'd like you to appreciate our monarch in all his glory  And look, if you will, at the tiny chrysalis.  Try to imagine such a large butterfly emerging from such a tiny compartment.  I mean, you'd be lucky to get 100 mg. of Benadryl inside that tiny chrysalis.  Clearly this packaging, is another of God's miracles. Over an hour or so, the butterfly emerges from that miniscule compartment, stretches his wings and pumps fluid into them.  The wings stretch to their full adult dimension, dry and...voila.  You have a fully formed adult monarch.  He will not grow another millimeter for the duration of his life.

    Now let us return to Tuesday morning, January 23rd, 75 days from the place in time when there were no caterpillars.    Sandra and I strolled around the corner and into the parking area behind the library and suddenly we stopped dead in our tracks.  Not as dead as Theodore Donald Kerabastos, but we were in shock. The three milkweed plants (trees) had been thrashed.  From a distance it looked like someone had grabbed each leaf and pulled, leaving only the central vein. A thousand leaves had been devoured in no less than ten days. (Yes, we are sufficiently bored that we go back and check on that stand of milkweed shrubs on a regular basis.)

Monarch Caterpillar 5th Instar, Kona January 2024

    Approaching the milkweed we immediately identified a many caterpillars.  We examined the trees for about ten minutes, identified 4th and 5th instars, but nothing smaller and no chrysalises.  At that point it was necessary to return to Dixson's 76, retrieve the moderately faithful Sportage, and head back to Casa Ono and take a nap.  Amateur entomology is exhausting.  That's my excuse and I'm stickin' to it.

     Thursday was Coffee with a Cop day at the Kailua Kona Public Library.  We are friends with the recently retired DA for this side of the island and she wanted to put in an appearance with her fellow law enforcement associates and view my handiwork at the same time.  So Dale and a couple friends met us for a look at the butterfly exhibit in the library and then we all strolled back to the milkweeds for a look at the real thing.  No surprise, there were plenty of butterflies and, like the day before, plenty of 4th and 5th instars of the monarch caterpillar.  

    This time I was more assiduous in examining the remaining leaves.  To my immense gratification, on the ventral surface of a couple of these leaves I spotted a few tiny caterpillars.  It is a testimony to my cell phone camera that I was able to nab a serviceable picture of a 2nd instar, a mere three millimeters in length.  

2nd instar of the Monarch caterpillar, Kona January 2024

   I sort of forced Dale and Brenda to look at the tiny caterpillars and ooh and ahrr (that's how they say it in Boston, the Hub of true academia), at my photograph on the cell phone.  Having made a couple attempts to produce these instars in clay and acrylic, it was pretty cool to see the real thing.  

    Not only that, but after a bit I found a dark chrysalis, ripe with a  soon to be emerging  monarch within.  Ahh, the miracle of life.

    Additionally,  we found a wasp eating a 4th instar caterpillar, that presumably it had killed.  I commented to my friends that this was just like Wild Kingdom, observing a leopard devouring a sometimes antelope in a tree out on the Serengeti.  I took a movie, which is very good,  but I'm not clever enough to get it into the blog.  You will have to make do with the still photograph, which is pretty exciting in its own right.  Where's Marlin Perkins when you need him?  

 A 3rd instar Monarch caterpillar and possibly an egg, Kona January 2024

    However, its not quite as simple as the leopard and the antelope.  The leopard can eat many different kinds of animals and a variety of carnivores can eat the antelope.  Not so with Monarchs.  That deceased caterpillar had been consuming milkweed 24/7 for two weeks, not only to grow larger in size but to increase his toxicity to birds...and everything else.  While Andrew Zimmer may eat caterpillars in Vietnam, I doubt seriously that he eats Monarch caterpillars!  

   I submit, that this particular wasp has been evolving with the Monarch for, say 20 million years, keeping pace with the toxicity of the milkweed.  And if you were able to go to Indonesia, that cradle of development where crown milkweed may very well have originated, you may well find this same species of wasp that traveled with the Monarch over the seas as an egg or caterpillar, to continue God's work here in Hawaii.  Good luck getting an entomologist to help you with this project. There are so many species of parasitic wasps, that when these learned folk speak of them, they adopt language best suited for Jeffrey Lebowski.  Like, "If you think I'm going to identify that particular f***ing wasp you can go f*** yourself."  I'm not kidding.  And this from somebody who gets paid good money, your money, to sit on his ass at a university and identify insects. 

A Monarch chrysalis ripe for emergence.  Kona 2024

   At this point my friend Dale, who would never use the F word,  said something like,"This was really interesting.  Your enthusiasm is remarkable."  and headed back to the library to enjoy the aforementioned java with the constabulary.

    So why is this important?  There is little in the literature about the seasonality of Monarchs in Hawaii.  They don't migrate and real butterfly guys think that they pretty much go about their reproductive business year round, like showing up for work at the Post Office.  Repetitive and boring.  There is but a single paper that I found a few months ago, written by students at UH Manoa, in which they describe a similar experience to what Sandra and I have documented here.  Suffice it to say, Sandra and I are now convinced that seasonality does exist in the Monarchs of Hawaii Island.

    I recently inquired of Daniel Rubinoff regarding a butterfly that I have not seen, Blackburn's Blue Butterfly.  This butterfly lives in a restricted habitat at altitude, the slopes of Mauna Loa on this island.  He stated that this would be a good time to look for it as the host plants are getting going and, he thought, the butterflies might be more prevalent.   This may or may not be related to our experience with the Monarchs two blocks from the ocean., but it is tantalizing. 

A wasp devours a 4th instar Monarch caterpillar.

    This is not the flowering season for many of our introduced trees, like jacaranda, whose purple blooms spring forth in late April and May, early spring on the temperate mainland.  That will come in two or three months.  And if I had to pick a season, I would have guessed that would be the time at which Monarch reproduction would peak.  

   But the plant that really matters is the crown milkweed.  I must admit that the leaves upon which those tiny caterpillars were dining looked mighty succulent and tasty.  But exercising all my will power, I did not take a few of them home to augment my dinner salad!

jeff