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Program Symposium

Plant-Insect Ecosystems

Systematics, Evolution, and Biodiversity

Empowering Insect Science, Management and Conservation Through Emerging Technologies

Towards tracking individual monarch butterfly movements and behaviors in the wild: Advances with mSAIL (milligram-scale small animal integrated logger)

Tuesday, November 12, 2024
11:05 AM - 11:25 AM MST
Location: Phoenix Convention Center, 124 AB, PCC
Oral Presentation
Monarch butterflies are renowned for their annual trans-continental migration where the congregate in the millions in the oyamel fir forests of central Mexico. Individual butterflies make singular trips to these overwintering sites and thus monarchs must possess a genetically encoded spatiotemporal program to locate these sites with such regular precision. Decades of traditional tagging work and stable isotope studies have revealed important information about these migratory paths such that broad pathways are known. More specific information about their daily behaviors and paths during migration could answer important questions about their navigation strategy and habitat use. We are developing mSAIL, a milligram-scale environmental geolocator for tracking monarch migration. The unit is constructed using prior custom designed integrated circuits providing solar energy harvesting, an ultra-low power processor, power management, and a wireless transceiver, all integrated and stacked with a printed antenna. The proposed system is designed to record and compress light and temperature data during the migration path while harvesting solar energy for energy autonomy and wirelessly transmit the data at the overwintering site in Mexico. From these data, the daily location of the butterfly can be estimated using a deep learning-based localization algorithm. Initial trials of local (caged) and wild function indicate the feasibility of mSAIL to record monarch movements as well as progress toward continental-scale migration measurement.