[les]

I live in Timaru & now have my 3rd good-sized monarch butterfly with wing problems. The butterflies have wings that stay permanently creased & crumpled, or that never unfold. I’ve noticed that the chrysalis of these ones opens a fraction then nothing happens for quite a while. When the butterfly does emerge it’s very slowly & appears to have problems becoming fully emerged. I wonder if it is the slowness of the emergence process that causes this, that the wings are partially drying while still in the chrysalis. Others have emerged easily & have wings that are straight. Does anyone else either have this problem or know why it happens?

[Jacqui]

Hello Les

If you look around the forum and especially at older posts – or search the hot tags for things like disease, chrysalis etc – you’ll find other people have reported problems such as this in the past.

My suspicion would be that you have a build up of a disease like Oe, and that the butterflies are too weak when they are emerging.

There are plenty of references to Oe from previous posts too.

Jacqui

[Author]

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