A monarch butterfly carrying a tiny tag developed by Cellular Tracking Technologies at the Cape May Point Arts and Science Center in New Jersey, which helped fund a monarch tagging project.Credit...Video by Hannah Beier
Posted on 11/19/2025 4:51:38 PM PST by E. Pluribus Unum
Scientists used tiny new sensors to follow the insects on journeys that take thousands of miles to their winter colonies in Mexico.
A monarch butterfly carrying a tiny tag developed by Cellular Tracking Technologies at the Cape May Point Arts and Science Center in New Jersey, which helped fund a monarch tagging project.Credit...Video by Hannah Beier
For the first time, scientists are tracking the migration of monarch butterflies across much of North America, actively monitoring individual insects on journeys from as far away as Ontario all the way to their overwintering colonies in central Mexico.
This long-sought achievement could provide crucial insights into the poorly understood life cycles of hundreds of species of butterflies, bees and other flying insects at a time when many are in steep decline.
The breakthrough is the result of a tiny solar-powered radio tag that weighs just 60 milligrams and sells for $200. Researchers have tagged more than 400 monarchs this year and are now following their journeys on a cellphone app created by the New Jersey-based company that makes the tags, Cellular Tracking Technologies.
Most monarchs weigh 500 to 600 milligrams, so each tag-bearing migrator making the transcontinental journey is, by weight, equivalent to a half-raisin carrying three uncooked grains of rice.
“There’s nothing that’s not amazing about this,” said Cheryl Schultz, a butterfly scientist at Washington State University and the senior author of a recent study documenting a 22 percent drop in butterfly abundance in North America over a recent 20-year period. The movements of monarchs and other flying insects are cloaked in mystery, and “now we will have answers that could help us turn the tide for these bugs.”
Tracking the world’s most famous insect migration may also have a big social impact, with monarch lovers able...
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
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My wife mentions that occasionally. She’s seen it.
I’d love to see that one day.
Is the polar bear meme real, or just funny?
You probably did but were sabotaged by spellcheck.
Annuals are the hard part, and the most important to diverse insect life. Even tiny weeds can suppress native annual germination. If you have that problem I may be able to share what I've done to make it happen, but it takes considerable time to learn visually distinguish native germination from weed seedlings. FRmail me if you have questions.
Of course, given the way butterflies fly, a one-mile trip covers a distance of 5.
The polar bear population is indeed growing.
I used a habitat in August/September to help house Monarch caterpillars during a cold spell. I had 35 caterpillars and 31 successfully emerged from their chrysalises and flew away. It was a fascinating experience.
Maryland decided to plant milkweed in the median strips of I70, which seemed like a brilliant idea.
However, they somehow did not foresee what would happen when newly emerged Monarchs flew out of the median strips straight into interstate traffic.
It was horrible.
Amazing this summer watching the high number of fireflies over the front meadow (used to be a lawn) vs adjacent areas that were mowed. A three acre meadow had over 4,000 fireflies as estimated by an entomologist that did a survey.
The non-native species that we focus on in the ornithology research area I maintain is Common Teasel. It fragments medians where ground nesting birds frequent. Since 2018 we’ve hand cut or pulled over 73,000 plants with over 15,000 in 2025. It’s spread primarily by improper late season mowing. In doing an off-season survey, the number of teasel basal rosettes that are wintering over is at a six year low. There’s several species of milkweed in the area and we do not disturb those as a general rule.
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