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Background

Many questions about monarch migration remain unanswered: How do monarchs know which direction to fly to arrive at overwintering sites? What guides monarchs in migration? Do they use the sun as a compass, the earth’s magnetic field, features of the landscape, such as rivers and mountains, a combination of these or perhaps some undiscovered method? Does a monarch starting in Minnesota use the same directional clues as a monarch from New England? By making simple observations and keeping systematic records of the monarchs you observe in your location in the fall, you can help answer these and other questions.

Combining this research with the next lesson, "Weather conditions during the fall migration," is ideal. This would allow your students to determine whether there is a relationship between weather conditions and the number and flight direction of fall migrants that they observe. If desired, you could also tag the monarchs you observe. 

Materials

• Fall Monarch Migration Data Sheet (student handout sheet): one posted in classroom, optional copies for each student
• Optional: Anemometer (for measuring wind speed)
• Optional: Compass (for measuring wind direction or monarch flight direction)
• Computer or other tools for analyzing and displaying data (graph paper)
• Thermometer

1. Explain the importance of accurate and consistent data collection, and discuss the unknown questions about monarch migration (see above) with your students. Emphasize the fact that they will be collecting interesting and important data that can be used to help us understand more about how monarchs migrate throughout the country.
2. Hand out and go over the data sheet with your students. For behavior, we have listed three kinds of behavior: roosting (sitting still in a tree or bush, often with several butterflies), flying, and nectaring. It is good, but not necessary, to have accurate weather data. If you are also keeping track of weather conditions every day, you wouldn’t need to record weather conditions on this data sheet. You can estimate wind speed as strong, breezy, slight, or calm. For cloud cover, use clear, overcast, or partly cloudy.
3. If you live in an area where students are likely to see many monarchs, you can use the lesson as a take-home activity. Give each student a data sheet, and compile their observations at regular intervals in the classroom.
4. If possible, take your students outside to a place that they might see migrating monarchs, and collect data as a class.
5. Summarize and analyze your data. There are many things that you can do with the data you have collected. You may want to make copies of the compiled raw data, and have each student make a graph that uses class data to answer a question of their choosing. You could also analyze the data as a class. Some of the questions students may answer include:

• Fall Monarch Migration Data Sheet ~print in horizontal/landscape mode~

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ã 2001 Monarchs in the Classroom  - University of Minnesota
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