Radio telemetry of butterflies: practical insights and critical tag-weight thresholds.

ABSTRACT:

Background

Radio telemetry offers new opportunities for studying the movement of insects. One important prerequisite for using radio tags to study butterfly movement ecology is that tag weight and attachment do not significantly affect butterfly flight performance. Despite recent applications of telemetry in butterflies, a systematic evaluation of tag-to-body-weight thresholds for successful tagging has been lacking.

Methods

We tested ultra-light radio tags (0.13 g) on 117 individuals of 18 butterfly species under greenhouse and field conditions. Tag-to-body-weight ratios ranged from 5.6% to 77.8%. We used generalized linear mixed-effects models to identify predictors of flight success and used ROC analysis to determine the critical tag-to-body-weight threshold. Tag retentio

SUBMITTER: Heitzler S 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC12690926 | biostudies-literature | 2025 Dec

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature