October Membership Meeting: Monarchs in the Storm

Our October 3, 2024 Membership Meeting will feature a native seed exchange from 6 to 7 pm, social mixing and light refreshments from 7 to 7:30 pm, a short business meeting and then a presentation on monarch butterflies from 7:30 to 8:30 pm. Come for whatever part of the meeting that interests you.

Members annually bring native plant seeds to share at our October membership meeting. Bring native plant seeds that you have collected in the past year in a container with a label indicating their genus-species, and it is helpful if you list where the seed was collected. Please try to clean out any non-seed material (leaves, capsules, weevils) beforehand if possible. Envelopes and pencils will be available for members to package up seed they wish to take, but it is also helpful if you brought your own recycled envelopes. Any leftover seed may be packaged for sale at the November plant sale.

Kyle Nessen will be presenting on Monarchs in the Storm: How New Technologies Unveil Hidden Overwintering Butterfly Behavior. Monarch butterflies are an iconic pollinator species that occurs across all of North America. They are famous for their annual mass migration from their summer breeding grounds to overwintering sites in the mountains of Mexico and the Pacific Coast. San Luis Obispo and our surrounding counties are home to some of the largest and most important California overwintering groves, providing fantastic displays where tens of thousands of butterflies can be found on a single tree. Kyle discuss the natural history of monarch butterflies and their unrivaled migratory behavior. He will also present the status of his master’s thesis, which uses innovative technologies such as drones, wind simulation, and timelapse photography to better understand how monarch butterflies endure our intense winter storms and how we can conserve their habitat for decades to come.

Kyle Nessen has been a biologist and botanist on the central coast since 2011. He specializes in integrating technology, such as GIS, drones, and cameras, into natural history studies and his consulting work. Kyle studied at Cuesta College and Cal Poly SLO, earning a bachelor’s degree in Biology focusing on botany. He works at Althouse and Meade, Inc. as the Techincal Innovation Program Manager and also contributes as a CNPS Certified Consulting Botanist. Kyle is currently pursuing his master’s degree at Cal Poly under Dr. Ritter, Dr. Yost, and Dr. Villablanca, studying overwintering monarch butterflies.