10/01/2026
Will here from the science team!
Did you know that it is possible to put a radio tag on a monarch butterfly? Last week, we had the opportunity to assist Mercy Manzanares from Monarch Joint Venture in placing BlūMorpho radio tags on monarch butterflies! These small tags are solar powered and utilize cell towers and bluetooth technology to track the monarchs as they journey to Mexico. The technology is quite amazing as each of the tags weigh less than a grain of rice!!
These tags had originally been designated for deployment at other Nebraska locations, but drought conditions in the Panhandle and rainy weather during planned deployment days required the team to adjust. The Crane Trust stepped up to help deploy the remaining 14 tags, ensuring they could still contribute to the statewide study and help fill important knowledge gaps about monarch migration. The data will help researchers examine movement direction, distance, speed, timing, stopover locations, and potential migration corridors across the state. The tags used for this project were funded by Omaha’s Henry Doorly Zoo and Aquarium and the Nebraska Game and Parks Commission.
To place a tracker on a monarch, first we caught the monarchs in a net. Next, the monarch was brought back to the lab to s*x, weigh, and measure the wing length. We test each monarch for a microscopic parasite known as OE (Ophryocystis elektroscirrha). This parasite negatively affects monarchs, causing them to grow smaller and weaker, have wing deformities, impaired mating, and shorter flight endurance. If the monarch has OE, we did not tag that monarch. Finally, Mercy would fix the tags onto the back of the monarch’s thorax, letting the non-toxic glue harden for about 20 minutes with the tracker in place. Finally, after some waiting in a butterfly cage, we activated the tracker and released the monarch! We tagged and released 14 monarchs.
If you want to stay tuned in to the migration of our monarch butterflies you can download the Project Monarch Science app! All of our tags have “NEB” within their names. Safe travels monarchs!!
