Speakers: Betty Yan and Mary Oldham
The quest by the Canadian zoologists, Fred and Norah Urquhart to discover the overwintering site for the monarch butterfly, has relied on the help of citizen scientists throughout North and Central America. Small adhesive stickers were designed, tested and distributed by the Urquharts to these volunteers to track the migration of the monarchs. Between the 1950s-1980s, the Urquharts recruited >600 volunteers, resulted in the discovery of the overwintering ground in Mexico in 1975. Over 3 million monarch butterflies had been tagged with stickers by tens and thousands of volunteers to date.
Betty and Mary have been involved in using these sticker tags for 8 years. The talk will include a demonstration of applying sticker tags. About a year ago, a new technology using a light weight, solar-powered ratio tag was deployed tracking the migration of individual monarch butterflies both east and west of the Rockies in the fall of 2025. Betty and Mary have been looking into how to get involved in tagging with radio tags. The talk will also share their findings.
Mary Oldham holds a MS Degree in Special Education and taught students of various ages for 33 years. The greatest number of years were spent serving students in the RISE Special Services/Southside Special Services program. After retirement, Mary planted a small butterfly garden which attracted Monarchs. She was excited to be able to watch and learn about the entire Monarch butterfly cycle in real life –- after reading and acting out the book, The Very Hungry Caterpillar by Eric Carle, to her students hundreds of times over her career. The garden has continued to grow as has the Monarch population.
Betty Yan is a member of Scientech Club. She got a BS degree in Chemistry and a PhD degree in Biochemistry. After retiring as a research biochemistry working 33 years at Eli Lilly and Co., she was interested to keep on learning other areas of science as a citizen scientist. She has no prior background in entomology. Working and learning about monarch butterfly have been fun.
