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Butterflies are in decline across North America, a look at the Western Monarch

smithsonianmag.com

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Re: Butterflies are in decline across North America, a look at the Western Monarch

#11

Post by 1659447091 »

>> To better understand the stresses on these migratory species, scientists at Lighthouse Field are testing a new ultralight radio tag. Weighing less than a tenth of a gram, these tags, when placed on butterflies, can passively ping Bluetooth- and location-enabled cellphones of anyone nearby.

They put a solar powered tracking tag on a butterfly...

Then made an app and gamified it to get people to use their phones to collect, track, and upload the processed monarch migration data. It's like Pokemon Go meets SETI@Home for butterflies.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c8ZyJn6BENc

https://swmonarchs.org/ProjectMonarch.php

https://celltracktech.com/pages/project-monarch-press-releas...

Re: Butterflies are in decline across North America, a look at the Western Monarch

#12

Post by fooqux »

micromacrofoot wrote: post #5
tastyfreeze wrote: post #2

It is my hope that humans can ditch their love affair with pesticides. This is just one example of the unintended impact of pesticides. I have also found dying birds in my yard a few days after the neighbor sprayed their house perimeter for ants. No toxicology report but there was no sign of any physical damage.

it is not love, we need to make it unprofitable homeowners have nothing on farms, acres and acres of pesticides and monocultures

> we need to make it unprofitable

Hard to do that when the very thing you're fighting against drastically lowers the cost of the product.

No, this is what regulation and laws are for. Too bad science and the like seem to be on the way out currently. :/

Re: Butterflies are in decline across North America, a look at the Western Monarch

#13

Post by jihadjihad »

fooqux wrote: post #10

I wish clover lawns would at least make a comeback. Still extremely hard to find seed for it though.

> Still extremely hard to find seed for it though.

It’s not too hard to find in the US. You could buy five pounds of seed [0] right now if you wanted to.

0: https://www.johnnyseeds.com/farm-seed/legumes/clovers/new-ze...

Re: Butterflies are in decline across North America, a look at the Western Monarch

#14

Post by JCBird1012 »

1659447091 wrote: post #11

>> To better understand the stresses on these migratory species, scientists at Lighthouse Field are testing a new ultralight radio tag. Weighing less than a tenth of a gram, these tags, when placed on butterflies, can passively ping Bluetooth- and location-enabled cellphones of anyone nearby. They put a solar powered tracking tag on a butterfly... Then made an app and gamified it to get people to use their phones to…

A related project, but for birds - https://motus.org

Motus is a distrbuted network of ground stations for tracking birds and other species (like bats!) for research - they also use CTT tags for tracking (along with tags from another company called Lotek - https://www.lotek.com)

Re: Butterflies are in decline across North America, a look at the Western Monarch

#15

Post by tmoertel »

fooqux wrote: post #10

I wish clover lawns would at least make a comeback. Still extremely hard to find seed for it though.

Dutch white clover is easy and cheap to purchase, at least in the United States:

https://www.google.com/search?q=Dutch+white+clover+seed+for+...

https://www.ernstseed.com/product/white-clover-dutch/

Re: Butterflies are in decline across North America, a look at the Western Monarch

#16

Post by nomel »

tastyfreeze wrote: post #2

It is my hope that humans can ditch their love affair with pesticides. This is just one example of the unintended impact of pesticides. I have also found dying birds in my yard a few days after the neighbor sprayed their house perimeter for ants. No toxicology report but there was no sign of any physical damage.

I had a salesman come to our place saying that a neighbor had spiders, so their whole backyard was treated! I laughed and shut the door.

Re: Butterflies are in decline across North America, a look at the Western Monarch

#17

Post by tempaccount5050 »

kleton wrote: post #4

Gen X and Millenials don't share Boomers' obsession with green lawns, so it's a race against time, whether Boomers or lightning bugs will go extinct first

Maybe not directly, but they definitely care about property value which gets you municipal codes requiring you to mow your lawn or get fined.

Re: Butterflies are in decline across North America, a look at the Western Monarch

#18

Post by Octoth0rpe »

kleton wrote: post #4

Gen X and Millenials don't share Boomers' obsession with green lawns, so it's a race against time, whether Boomers or lightning bugs will go extinct first

On the other hand, I don't think I know any millenials that don't have an extremely overbearing HoA that forbids anything other than a grass lawn.

Re: Butterflies are in decline across North America, a look at the Western Monarch

#19

Post by NewJazz »

ceejayoz wrote: post #7
tastyfreeze wrote: post #2

It is my hope that humans can ditch their love affair with pesticides. This is just one example of the unintended impact of pesticides. I have also found dying birds in my yard a few days after the neighbor sprayed their house perimeter for ants. No toxicology report but there was no sign of any physical damage.

We had a really bad year of mosquitos and got one of the spraying services in. An hour later, monarch having a seizure on our porch. Oops. Never again.

Mosquito dunks and clear standing or pooling water.

Re: Butterflies are in decline across North America, a look at the Western Monarch

#20

Post by dqv »

fooqux wrote: post #10

I wish clover lawns would at least make a comeback. Still extremely hard to find seed for it though.

I thought about it, but it turns out the clover that people use for lawns isn't native, and I figured that if I'm doing the lawncare, I'm going to go as native as possible. I don't think our natives here in the US - trifolium reflexum and trifolium carolinianum - work very well as a "lawn" like that. I do have the carolinianum seeds that I want to grow in a container. Both are rare, so I want to help keep them in existence.

I'm looking into native sedges right now since they provide a lot of ecological benefit and are better-suited to growing in the soil conditions of my yard.

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