A new project by the New Hampshire Audubon is tracking the migration of one of the most iconic insects in North America—monarch butterflies. For residents across the northeast, this also brings an opportunity to contribute to the project by tracking the migration from their homes.
Monarchs are a unique kind of butterfly in the region, as the only ones in North America to undertake a long-distance, multi-generational migration all the way to Mexico. NH Audubon has been tracking monarchs for years now, but this year, the non-profit has placed solar-powered tags on 50 of the butterflies. These light-weight tags help researchers track the movements and migration of the butterflies in real time.
This fall, NH Audubon has tagged 50 butterflies that can be tracked by the public.
Track monarch butterflies migrating through New Hampshire in real time
The Project Monarch app launched last fall, giving all users the opportunity to track monarch butterflies that have been tagged by several nonprofits across the country.
The mobile app has a map that shows the real-time location of hundreds of butterflies using the tags on their backs. Users within 10-100 meters of a monarch can detect them and update their location in the map as well.
To view the monarchs tagged by NH Audubon, simply filter to ‘New Hampshire Audubon’ under the Organization filter.
Once you sign in to the app or create your account, you need to enable the bluetooth on your device. If you do that, the app will track the next time a butterfly is within 10-100 meters range of your phone and log it.
By tagging as many monarchs as you can find, you can contribute to NH Audubon’s data collection project.
The solar tags charge during the day with the help of sunlight, which helps keep them active for the entirety of the butterflies’ migration.
“These new solar-powered tags are at the cutting edge of technology to study movement ecology,” NH Audubon Biologist Lindsay Herlihy explained in a blog on the nonprofit’s website. “This is the first year they’ve been deployed in New England, and we are thrilled to see how precise and numerous the detections are for the first eleven tags we have deployed so far this fall.”
What is Project Monarch?
Project Monarch is a multi-organization effort tracking the movement of monarch butterflies by partnering with 71 organizations across four countries. The initiative follows individual insects through their entire journey: fall migration, overwintering, spring migration, and summer breeding.
The trackers, known as BlūMorpho tags, became a groundbreaking way of keeping tabs on the insects due to their negligible weight—one tracker weights about 0.066 grams—and their real-time tracking using solar. The tags are stuck on the backs of monarchs with eyelash glue and have revolutionized the tagging process, which for years used numbered stickers.
Last year, NH Audubon alone tagged 74 new monarchs during fall migration, bringing their total to 204. This year, they added 50 more tags.
This article originally appeared on Portsmouth Herald. Reporting by Hazel Gandhi.
