Millions of monarch butterflies migrate each fall to a specific cluster of mountain peaks in central Mexico.
Millions of monarch butterflies migrate each fall to a specific cluster of mountain peaks in central Mexico. How exactly they navigate to their winter home, and the way they choose their path, is a topic of great interest to scientists—especially as climate change redirects their chosen path.
Inhee Lee, assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering at the University of Pittsburgh, is part of a team developing a tracking system that could be attached to monarch butterflies and transmit data about their location all throughout the three month journey south. A paper detailing these findings recently won the Best Paper Award at the MobiCom 2021 Conference.
“Tracking animal migration is a critical ecosystem indicator,” said Lee. “Migrators travel long distances across entire continents, and it can give us unprecedented insight into their migratory paths, how the environment around them is changing, and how species interactions are impacted by changing movements and distributions.”
Read more at: University of Pittsburgh
Monarch Butterfly with mSAIL in its enclosure. (Photo Credit: Delbert A. Green II)
