melanieflo's Identifications

Found this larva crawling on my bag when I got home from a drive to the Paulding Fossil Community Garden in Paulding Ohio. I was originally in a younger instar when I found it and was a light yellow color, but then a few days later it molted and became darker as seen in the last photo. It then molted a few more times and continued to get darker, until it pupated after a month. Was in the pupal stage for a couple weeks, then emerged and I released it. (Found the larva around July 14th 2020, pupated a few weeks later, then emerged as an adult on August 9th 2020)

Just a handful of the monarchs we raised in summer 2020; my family and I would go outside of our house and collect the wild eggs (and few already hatched larvae) from the surrounding milkweed. We were able to raise and release around 200 monarch butterflies from June-September! My family back home in Ohio is doing this again this year (2021). Marked as captive/cultivated because we assisted in raising them, but the milkweed and eggs were from a natural, open, wild area; we released all organisms in the same place they were originally found.