Events

This webinar is sponsored by Go Native!, the outreach arm of the Missouri Prairie Foundation.

Join us to learn the latest news about the status of monarch butterflies and how you can be part of the nationwide effort to conserve monarchs and their breathtaking migration. Dr. Chip Taylor, who has been researching monarchs for decades, will share population trends and how they are affected by climate change. He will also share conservation strategies, including what you can do at home to support North America’s iconic butterfly. The rhythms of life shaped by millions of years of evolution are being challenged and altered by our rapidly changing climate. The connections long established between plants and their pollinators are of particular concern since these interdependencies shape and sustain nearly all terrestrial ecosystems. Our future will be defined by how well we understand and maintain these connections.

The webinar, to be held via Zoom, will be 45 minutes including a question and answer session. The webinar will be recorded, and sent to all registrants as well as posted to our YouTube channel.

Cost: Free

Chip Taylor is the Founder and Director of Monarch, and an Emeritus Professor in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at the University of Kansas. Trained as an insect ecologist at the University of Connecticut, his research projects have included studies of reproductive isolating mechanisms in sulfur butterflies, reproductive and life history patterns in plants, comparative biology of European and Neotropical African honey bees and migratory behavior of monarch butterflies. In 1974, Chip Taylor established research sites and directed students studying Neotropical African honey bees (killer bees) in French Guiana, Venezuela, and Mexico. In 1992, Taylor founded Monarch Watch, an outreach program focused on education, research and conservation relative to monarch butterflies. Since then, Monarch Watch has enlisted the help of volunteers to tag monarchs during the fall migration. Over 2 million monarchs have been tagged by volunteers since 1992. Of these, over nineteen thousand have been recovered. The data from this program are providing many new insights about the dynamics of the fall monarch migration.

Read Dr. Taylor’s Monarch Joint Venture article “More Than Monarchs: Grassland Conservation”