Monarch Butterfly Migration Research Online Talk

Monarch Butterfly Research at the Fields Pond Audubon Center

Each fall, millions of monarch butterflies leave their summer breeding grounds in the northeastern U.S & Canada. and travel 3,000 miles to reach overwintering grounds in southwestern Mexico. In this program, Wesley Hutchins from the University of Maine at Orono will talk about his research with tracking monarch butterflies with a new technology–the MOTUS tower at Fields Pond Audubon Center–designed to help researchers track very small animals, particularly insects. Hutchins will also go over some of the natural history and lifestyle of monarchs.

Wesley Hutchins is a wildlife ecology major at the University of Maine at Orono. A native Mainer (from Swanville), Wesley has had a passion for wildlife as long as he can remember. His main focuses are insects and birds.

Learn more about this project in this blog post from August 2021: Nanotagging Monarch Butterflies — Very, Very Carefully — at Fields Pond