8A NEWS
SCIENCE
THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 18, 2006
Researchers tag monarchs track migration patterns Group follows butterflies through 3,000-mile trip
BY MATT ELDER
The University of Kansas' Monarch Watch held its annual butterfly tagging Saturday in front of the largest crowd in the event's history.
"I'd be willing to bet this beats our all-time best of 2001," said Orley "Chip" Taylor, professor of biology. "There's easily been 400 people today."
The watch is sponsored by the Department of Biological Sciences. The event was held at the 573-acre Haskell-Baker Wetlands on 31st Street east of Louisiana Street, whose goal is to provide a educationally
sponsored wildlife reserve.
Both students and Lawrence locals found swarms of butterflies in the conservation's wooded areas, where hundreds of monarchs floated in between trees. Once a monarch was caught, a circular, nine millimeter sticker was placed on its wing to track its migration. The butterflies will continue their migrating pattern south, where some will have traveled as many as 3,000 miles.
Michael Sanders, Topeka senior, has been involved with Monarch Watch since his sophomore year in 2004. He helped with the event Saturday.
Vanessa Pearson/KANSAN
Michelle Fuhrer, Baker University senior, places a tag on a monarch butterfly Saturday at the Baker-Haskell Wetlands. Fuhrer attended the tagging event with a Baker conservation group.
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"It's an on-campus job that's beneficial," Sanders said. "And it gives me experience doing real life research."
Sanders said it's been exciting to be involved with the program throughout his college years while also learning about the different aspects of the monarchs migration patterns — specifically the timing, origins and lifespan patterns of the migration cycle.
Both The New York Times and a German television crew were present to film a documentary of Saturday's event. Taylor hopes that both the national and international coverage will increase awareness for the monarch population.
"What we're trying to do is conserve a species by knowing the dynamics of the population," Taylor said. "To know this is to be able to frame some sort of process that's needed to conserve it."
Both Taylor and Sanders recognize the scientific importance of preserving the monarch population through their findings and are hoping that after this year's increase in media coverage the American public will as well.
"When you're on a continent that's losing three to four thousand acres a day just due to development, we're not going to have much of a habitat left in another 50 to 100 years," Taylor said. "If there's wildlife out there we cherish, we have to do something about curbing our appetite for expansion."
Kansan staff writer Matt Elder can be contacted at melder@kansan. com.
Edited by Catherine Odson
Ruan MrGoonev/KANSAN
Tyler Griffith, 6, releases a monarch butterfly after tagging it with his sister Rickie, 7, during the annual butterfly tagging event, held at the Haskell-Baker Wetlands Saturday morning. Orley "Chip" Taylor, professor of biology, said more than 400 people attended the event.
NATURE
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Hurricane strengthens to Category 3
MIAMI — Hurricane Helene strengthened Sunday into a Category
3 storm in the open Atlantic,becoming the second major hurricane of the 2006 season,forecasters said.
Helene had top sustained winds
of 115 mph hurricanes with top sustained winds of at least 111 mph are considered major hurricanes.
The hurricane did not threaten
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land. At 11 p.m. EDT, Helene was centered about 920 miles east-northeast of the northern Leeward Islands and moving northwest at 8 mph, forecasters said.
Hurricane Gordon, meanwhile, had been inching over the ocean at 3 mph but picked up speed Sunday, forecasters said. Its eye was centered about 1,365 miles west of the Azores and moving northeast near 14 mph.
It had top sustained winds near 80 mph, up slightly from earlier in the day.
The National Hurricane Center's latest forecast for the season expects between seven and nine hurricanes, a slight reduction from earlier predictions.
Scientists said this week that weak El Nino conditions had inhibited hurricane development by bringing higher ocean temperatures that increase crosswinds over the Caribbean. The winds can rip storms apart or stop them from forming.
But National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration scientists warned that the El Nino effect on hurricanes has been small so far.
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