Tiny solar trackers are revealing new monarch migration routes.
About 60 milligrams apiece, the tags can be detected by Motus receivers and participating smartphones without pretending to be continuous GPS trackers.
During the 2026 fall migration, researchers attached tiny solar-powered radio tags to roughly 1,800 monarch butterflies, creating a distributed record of movements that have been difficult to observe across a continent.
WHAT HAPPENED
Each tag weighs about 60 milligrams and broadcasts an identifier when a compatible receiver comes close. The Motus wildlife-tracking network and participating smartphones can register those encounters, producing a chain of detections rather than an exact, continuous GPS trail. Early 2026 findings include monarchs moving from Utah toward Mexico and down the eastern seaboard through Florida and the Gulf. The Associated Press reported about 175 detections in Mexico. Scientists are also testing whether carrying a tag changes flight or behavior; the method is promising, but those validation questions remain open.
WHY THIS IS HOPESLOP
A migration made of millions of fragile individual journeys is becoming legible through small solar tags, public phones and a shared scientific network. The hopeful part is not that every mystery is solved. It is that researchers can now see routes that conservation plans have mostly had to infer—and they are being unusually clear about what the technology still cannot tell them.
ORIGINAL SOURCEAssociated Press / Monarch Joint VentureRead the original report
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