Hailey Arthur loves her job. Not many college students serve as a butterfly caretaker.
“I’ve always liked butterflies since I was little. I would go outside and catch them and show my parents, and put them in jars and try to keep them as pets,” says Arthur, a junior in animal science. “Here I am now, raising butterflies. I joke that they’re like my babies.”
Arthur’s efforts are one part of the Iowa Monarch Conservation Consortium, a community-led effort out of the entomology department in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences. Several researchers are gathering sound scientific information on Iowa’s monarch butterfly population and milkweed conservation. The goal is to contribute long-term data to restore and retain the butterfly species and milkweed plants they feed on in Iowa.
Arthur is a student lab technician, working an average of 18 hours per week with the monarch program. Her efforts deal almost entirely with taking care of and raising a colony of butterflies.
Arthur is one of five undergraduate students currently working in the lab to raise butterflies for multiple projects. Those projects consist of the graduate students’ research projects and other extensions, outreach programs and educational purposes linked to the monarch conservation effort. The research includes studying butterfly flight patterns, toxins affecting caterpillars, genetics of monarch butterflies and educating the public.
Arthur, a native of Randall, Iowa, first got involved with the monarch program the summer after her freshman year at Iowa State. When she first started in the lab, learning how to use equipment to raise butterflies was her favorite part of the job.
“I was new to it all,” Arthur says. “During the summertime is our busiest time with hundreds of butterflies, so I got thrown in to doing so much, and learning so much, as well as getting to have a lot of fun with my co-workers.”
Arthur says her job can be a conversation starter. It’s a topic that comes up at job interviews, too. At her last internship with Cactus Family Farms in Osceola, Iowa, she was known as “The Butterfly Girl.”
“People don’t really understand what you mean when you say you work in a butterfly lab,” she says. “Working with butterflies is a job that not a lot of people can say they have done.”
Arthur busies herself each day with numerous tasks of taking care of the winter butterfly colony, which currently has more than 50 butterflies.
She feeds the monarchs water and their favorite drink, Gatorade. Arthur then monitors egg laying by placing an Erlenmeyer flask in the cages with sprigs of leaves in them and checking on them throughout the day, counting how many eggs are on the leaves to get specific amounts for the lab and to inform graduate students working on research projects.
Once the eggs hatch, she places them on individual agar plates. By the following week, she’ll place the caterpillars into individual cups where they will then grow and form their chrysalises and eventually emerge as the iconic monarch butterflies that everyone knows and recognizes.
Monarch butterflies are dependent on milkweed plants. Arthur also works in two greenhouses on campus where there are three rooms full of different types of plants and milkweed. During the winter, there are coneflower plants, which attracts butterflies, and tropical milkweed, which is used for feeding and for butterflies to lay eggs on. Arthur waters, fertilizes and transplants the plants, as well as plants milkweed seeds.
Arthur finds watching the life cycle of the butterflies unfold rewarding. Getting the chance to take care of the endangered species to do her part in the conservation is her biggest impact. She enjoys playing a part in the consortium and hopes to continue to help others.
Arthur also comes into the lab every day, even on the weekends. A couple days a week she’s in the lab most of the day to help during the butterflies’ busiest time of egg laying.
Learning and setting high goals keeps Arthur motivated. She enjoys seeing things get done around the lab. The lab environment is exciting and isn’t like anything else, Arthur says. No matter the job, deadlines are important.
“You wouldn’t think there would be so many deadlines for this kind of work, but there are,” Arthur says. “You have to make sure the butterflies get cared for first so they can eat and grow, then start other projects.”
For example, butterflies are known to contract a parasite called Ophryocystis elektroscirrha that is very deadly and can easily wipe out a whole colony when it spreads. Arthur’s boss Keith Bidne checks each individual butterfly that comes through the lab to ensure the colony stays healthy.
“At the end of the day, you do all the little things that may not make a huge difference, but are important. With raising butterflies, there really isn’t anything that doesn’t matter,” Arthur says. “You have to make sure everything gets done correctly and on time for the next life cycle step because one thing can mess up the whole colony.”
Sometimes it’s not the cleanest job, since butterflies and caterpillars can make a mess, Arthur says. But she stays positive and enjoys her co-workers.
“There isn’t silence when you walk into the room,” Arthur says. “The people here care and want to know how you are.”
Arthur and her seven co-workers also put together monarch-related displays for the Iowa State Fair, Farm Progress show, ISU Extension and Outreach 4-H programs and schools. The displays help to educate the public on what the Monarch Conservation Consortium does and what the public can do to help restore the monarch butterfly population and milkweed species around Iowa.
These projects include making milkweed growing kits, interactive activity sheets, pamphlets and petri dishes of male and female monarch butterflies for display.
Besides the monarchs, another side of her lab job is that Arthur gets to work on an insect that is a real headache and major economic problem for Iowa corn growers. She takes cares of European Corn Borer Moths. She makes the larvae their diet, water in their cages, changes out sheets with their eggs laid and hangs rings in the cages.
Dana Schweitzer, program coordinator and part of Iowa State’s monarch research team, works closely with Arthur.
“Hailey is a very dependable and detail-oriented team member. She embodies the leadership qualities the ISU monarch research team looks for in all of our student employees and she isn’t afraid to speak up when she notices a problem,” Schweitzer says. “Juggling the demands of a full course load with an hourly job can be challenging, but Hailey manages her time well and makes time to help others, too.”
Right now, Arthur’s goals are to figure out what she’s doing next. Working in the lab has opened her up to a different area of animal science and another career field with working in lab research.
Arthur has always had a love for animals. Her grandparents have raised bull calves, and that’s where her interest in animals started. Arthur often helps bottle-feed the calves and helped feed and water them.
Arthur is constantly trying to be more successful at her job with a “try to outdo yourself” attitude.
“I know if I have super high goals now it will help me out in the future,” she says.
Arthur is training to be a peer mentor for the animal program for next fall, where she is learning to help engage with others and how to be a resource for a group of next year’s freshman class in the animal science major. She’s also a member of the Block and Bridle Club and participated in the ISU Bacon Expo. Arthur has had previous summer internships working with swine production and getting first-hand pork production experience. This summer she’ll intern with PigCHAMP, a swine management software company in Ames, on the customer service side, an area she’s excited to learn about.
“I can’t think of myself going into anything else other than animal science,” Arthur says.
March 22, 2018