STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
It's migration season for monarch butterflies, and scientists have a new way to follow their journey south - they're rigging them with tiny backpacks and solar-powered trackers. Really. Vermont Public's Abagael Giles reports.
(SOUNDBITE OF MONARCH BUTTERFLY RUSTLING)
ABAGAEL GILES, BYLINE: That's the sound of a monarch butterfly rustling its legs. Biologist Desiree Narango is weighing the butterfly. She's holding it very gently by the abdomen in her lab in White River Junction, Vermont.
DESIREE NARANGO: To hold a butterfly, this part right here, this part of the vein, is the strongest part, so you can hold that safely. And this one is, ooh, a big 'un.
GILES: Next, Narango attaches a tiny transmitter to the butterfly's abdomen using nontoxic eyelash glue. Then she releases the butterfly named Brad (ph) outside to start his migration south for the winter.
NARANGO: There he goes. He's flying great, and, yeah, he's ready to go.
GILES: Narango is a biologist with the Vermont Center for Ecostudies, a local conservation nonprofit. She's one of dozens of researchers all over North America who are tracking these tiny insects as part of a big research collaborative called Project Monarch. The tiny transmitter she put on that butterfly uses Bluetooth to ping off of cellphones and create a map of his travels, giving scientists a new window into the mysterious lives of these intrepid insects.
NARANGO: We're in real time watching these individuals go through these hazardous landscapes, and so we're all texting each other, like, oh, my gosh, Anne (ph) is in New York City (laughter). And so it really sort of, like, blows your mind, like, how much these individuals need to go through in order to make it all the way to Mexico.
GILES: Monarch butterfly populations are shrinking. They're a candidate for listing on the federal endangered species list. Pesticides, climate change and habitat destruction are partly to blame, but scientists increasingly wonder if we humans are missing some key threat they encounter on their long journeys. Scientists already knew that a lot of eastern Monarchs spend their winters in the mountains of central Mexico. But until these solar transmitters came along, researchers didn't really know where they stopped along the way or what they might be running into. Greg Mitchell is an Ontario-based scientist with Environment and Climate Change Canada. He's using the data to study whether changing weather patterns could be stranding butterflies.
GREG MITCHELL: They seem to be really choosy and picky about under what wind conditions they're flying.
GILES: Scientists first tagged monarchs with the solar trackers last fall. They're already uncovering some surprises, like that many eastern monarchs actually migrate to northern Florida and to islands in the Caribbean. The monarchs also seem to be hanging out in old industrial parks and urban areas.
MITCHELL: It speaks to our ability as community members to support the monarch, no matter where we are.
GILES: Scientists have wanted to track insects for years, but until now, most trackers relied on batteries that are just too heavy for a bug to carry. These new trackers use tiny scraps of solar panels instead. No battery needed. David La Puma is with the New Jersey tech firm that invented the backpacks. He says they're already testing them on other insects and also on hummingbirds.
DAVID LA PUMA: We put these things on stick bugs and praying mantises and all sorts of stuff just to see kind of how they would behave and how the tags would behave on them.
GILES: You too can see into that world by following monarchs and their progress on your phone, using the Project Monarch app. Oh, and an update from Desiree Narango - Anne did make it through New York City, and all the way to Chattanooga, Tennessee.
For NPR News, I'm Abagael Giles in White River Junction, Vermont.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "BUTTERFLIES")
KACEY MUSGRAVES: (Singing) You give me butterflies. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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