About Project Monarch Health

 

Monarch Health is a community science project in which volunteers sample wild monarch butterflies to help track the spread of a protozoan parasite across North America.

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Our mission is to understand host -parasite interactions in monarchs and to enhance awareness of monarch biology and conservation through the coupling of community members and scientists.

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Monarch Health Newsletter

During summer 2020 and through spring 2021, 166 volunteers from 33 US states and 2 Canadian provinces submitted 6,417 samples to Project Monarch Health. This was down from our peak year of 2018, when > 12,000 samples were submitted. The average number of samples per volunteer in 2020 was 38. Infection prevalence by the protozoan OE was 24.8% across all samples tested, which is slightly higher than in 2019 (20%). 

We've highlighted the trends we saw during 2020-21 in our annual newsletter, which can be downloaded from our RESULTS page.

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​Request a sampling kit

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This project runs every year and kits are available throughout the year, every year. Send an email

to monarchhealth@gmail.com with your mailing address to request a kit!  We welcome new volunteers, especially in areas where the map shows we need more samples.

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Check our our data sheet and instructions at the bottom of this page.

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Calling all volunteers in the southern US

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Participants in the southern coastal US, including Texas, Florida, Louisiana, Georgia, Mississippi, Alabama, and the Carolinas - please report any winter monarch sightings to Journey North!  Check out this news release for more details:   https://gadnr.org/publics-help-needed-reporting-wintering-monarchs