Rebuilt in the Chrysalis: teacher key

Butterflies, grade 12 edition, written for 12th grade and up. Follow a monarch from egg to chrysalis to a 3,000-mile journey, and see how scientists count the butterflies that make it.

Read the book. Print this page for the key.

Questions and answers

1. What survives inside a chrysalis and builds the adult's wings, eyes, antennae and legs?
   • Eggshells
   • Imaginal discs (answer)
   • Milkweed
2. How do scientists estimate the eastern monarch population?
   • They count each butterfly
   • They weigh the milkweed
   • They measure the area of forest covered by roosting monarchs (answer)
3. Why do monarchs on their first trip south still find Mexico?
   • Their sense of direction is inherited, not learned (answer)
   • They follow older monarchs
   • They read maps
4. Why might a viceroy in northern Florida taste bad?
   • It never meets a predator
   • It is a moth
   • Queens are rare there, and viceroys there have become bad-tasting too (answer)
5. What does diapause mean for a migrating monarch?
   • A fast flight
   • A long rest that lets it get through a hard season (answer)
   • A kind of poison

Words

• metamorphosis: body-changing growth
• diapause: long growth pause
• proboscis: butterfly's tongue