Orley R. "Chip" Taylor

Chip Taylor is the Founder and Director of Monarch, and an Emeritus Professor in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at the University of Kansas. Trained as an insect ecologist at the University of Connecticut, his research projects have included studies of reproductive isolating mechanisms in sulfur butterflies, reproductive and life history patterns in plants, comparative biology of European and Neotropical African honey bees and migratory behavior of monarch butterflies.

In 1974, Chip Taylor established research sites and directed students studying Neotropical African honey bees (killer bees) in French Guiana, Venezuela, and Mexico. In 1992, Taylor founded Monarch Watch, an outreach program focused on education, research and conservation relative to monarch butterflies. Since then, Monarch Watch has enlisted the help of volunteers to tag monarchs during the fall migration. Over 2 million monarchs have been tagged by volunteers since 1992. Of these, over twenty thousand have been recovered. The data from this program are providing many new insights about the dynamics of the fall monarch migration.