>> 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.
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)
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 planted narrow leaf milkweed in my yard for the first time this spring. This is the first time I've planted something with the intention of it being eaten.
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.
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
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...
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)
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.
An hour later, monarch having a seizure on our porch. Oops. Never again.
That's not to say something can't work better on one particular type of biotic, but its still harmful to the others as well.
homeowners have nothing on farms, acres and acres of pesticides and monocultures
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. :/
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.
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...
https://www.google.com/search?q=Dutch+white+clover+seed+for+...
https://www.ernstseed.com/product/white-clover-dutch/