OKLAHOMA CITY, OKLA. (KOKH) — A new technology making it easier to track monarch butterfly migrations was deployed Saturday at the Oklahoma City Zoo and Botanical Garden as part of the zoo’s Native Species Awareness Day celebration.
OKC Zoo conservation scientist Dr. Emily Geest worked with pollinator conservation specialist Dr. Ray Moranz of The Xerces Society to tag six monarch butterflies with new, ultra-light radiotelemetry transmitters.
Tagging monarch butterflies is nothing new for the OKC Zoo and scientific community. For years, OKC Zoo experts and community scientists have used alphanumeric-coded stickers from Monarch Watch to record when and where a butterfly is caught and, if that same butterfly was relocated farther along its migration. Hundreds of thousands of traditional monarch sticker tags are distributed each year. Information from those tags is uploaded into a database and has provided important scientific information about the monarch migration for over 30 years.
“These new lightweight radiotelemetry tags are solar powered with Bluetooth technology embedded to allow anyone with a phone to contribute to tracking monarch butterflies,” said Geest.
The transmitter tags were developed by Cellular Tracking Technologies and Cape May Point Arts & Science Center and weigh just 0.06 grams—light enough that they won’t interfere with the butterflies’ ability to fly.
“We weigh every butterfly before we apply the tag. Smaller butterflies are tagged with the traditional sticker tags rather than the transmitter backpacks,” said Geest. “These tags aren’t that different from the kinds of tags we can use on our keychains or luggage to track their locations, just much, much lighter. This is the first time these new tags have been so widely distributed across the country, and they’re already generating a lot of excitement among monarch researchers.”
Each of the six butterflies tagged with transmitters at the OKC Zoo is coded XOKC001 through XOKC006, and each butterfly was also given a flower-inspired nickname: Violet, Maximillian, Autumn Sage, Juniper, Bluemist, and Beebalm.
“The amount of information these tags are providing is amazing. I can check in on each butterfly and see that southern winds carried Violet across the Cimarron River, while Beebalm found a dog park to hang in for a few hours in Edmond.”
Monarch butterflies are an iconic sight throughout North America, but the species is in peril as their population has declined by 90% in the last 30 years because of habitat loss, pesticides, and climate change.
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