Tiny Transmitters Teach Us About Insect Migration

January 12, 2010 — Many people don’t pay much attention to insects like bees, dragonflies or butterflies, unless they fly too close and bother them. Then there’s Martin Wikelski. To Wikelski, insects aren’t a nuisance. They are a way to unravel nature’s social network. As director of migration research at the Max Planck Institute for Ornithology in Germany, Wikelski is gluing miniscule radio transmitters onto the thoraxes or backs of such insects and following them in a single-engine Cessna in an attempt to learn their migration strategies. According to the February 2010 issue of Popular Mechanics, Wikelski glued 0.3-gram radio transmitters onto the thoraxes of 14 dragonflies and soon discovered the bug’s survival techniques: They refuse to fly when conditions are too windy, they schedule rest days and travel only during warm daylight hours. Wikelski and his team are able to assign a frequency or identification number to each tag so that individual animals can be identified. But dragonflies aren’t the only insects the Institute of Ornithology is following and learning about. Wikelski did the same thing in 2009, but with Monarch butterflies, tracking them with a radio transmitter as they migrate to their winter home in Mexico. Following the Monarchs and Wikelski in his airplane was a team from National Geographic, which photographed their journey for their film, “The Science of Migration,” planned for release later this year. The monarch’s radio transmitter weighed half as much as the animal itself and had to be carefully put on the butterflies’ abdomens using tweezers and adhesive. National Geographic magazine also reported in 2008 on Wikelski’s research on honeybees. In an effort to determine the unprecedented decline of millions of honeybees, he glued radio tracking tags — the size of three or four grains of rice — on the backs of bees, providing him and other scientists with a direct view of the pollinators’ flight patterns. The transmitters were powered by a tiny hearing-aid battery and weighed 0.006 ounces. What Wikelski has to say Listen to Martin Wikelski on National Public Radio’s All Things Considered talk about his tracking work with insects.

This lightweight tracking device is glued onto the thoraxes of migrating insects Photo credit: Popular Mechanics Martin Wikelski tracks the migrating insects with receivers. Photo credit: Popular Mechanics. Considerable dexterity is required to fit the butterflies with a transmitter. Image credit: MPI for Ornithology, Radolfzel/Carrie Fudic A bee wears a 0.006 ounce radio tracking tag, about one-third of its body weight. Photo credit: Christian Ziegler

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