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Harpenden, Hertfordshire (pte054/06.04.2005/17:00) - British researchers have become the first to plot the exact path of a butterfly's flight by attaching 12 mg transponders to the creatures' backs. As the BBC http://www.bbc.co.uk reports, the scientists at the Rothamsted Research Institute in Harpenden, Hertfordshire http://www.rothamsted.ac.uk said that the research will enable conservationalists to protect butterflies, which are important pollinators of wild flowers. "Butterflies provide a crucial service to plants in many ecosystems," said Lizzie Cant, one of the researchers. "This research will help us to understand a little more about how they survive in a countryside that is becoming more and more fragmented."
According to the researchers, butterflies can spot promising areas for nectar from up to 200 metres away and can purposely avoid places unattractive to them. Scientists had previously monitored butterflies by the naked eye - impossible from more than 100 metres - or by marking and collecting butterflies, a technique that only tells researches if a butterfly is in an area and not why or how it got there. However, by use of the transponders, a radar tracking team relayed specific location details to field researchers who found themselves able to keep up with the butterflies as they fluttered through a field. The insects were found to be undertaking a fast, directed flight to potential feeding sites. While between foraging missions, they undertook looping "orientation flights".
"Though this does not establish what is going on in their brains, it does show how butterflies can see a potential area of forage and decide if it looks familiar or suitable," said Cant. "They are intent on reaching forage and not just blown in by the wind." The harmonic radar technology used to track the butterflies was developed to observe the tsetse fly in Africa, then used by Rothamsted scientists to observe bee flight in the UK. Its application to monitor the flight patterns of a butterfly is compared by Rothamsted to watching the moving "blips" on a ship's radar screen. Attaching the transponder is a delicate process, involving the removal of "fine hairs" on the creature's back, applying a thin layer of paint onto which the transponder, mounted on a sticky pad, can be applied.
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