The Gazette publishes monarch research story

The (Cedar Rapids) Gazette has published a story, “To protect monarch butterflies, Cornell students collaborate on milkweed research,” on Associate Professor of Biology Tammy Mildenstein’s work with students to research the population decline of monarch butterflies.

Students spent the end of the summer in prairies studying milkweed plants hoping to understand their connection with the number of monarchs they produce. Milkweed is the only type of plant monarchs will lay their eggs on and the only plants their caterpillars can eat.

“We’re trying to understand how much prairie we need across North America to bring the population up,” Middlestein told The Gazette. “It’s about understanding how many milkweed are in a typical prairie and how many monarchs does that produce … There’s an international push to create more prairie habitat for monarchs, but nobody has a sense of how much we need to plant.”