"Cedar" sent me a comment about tagging butterflies, so I thought that it would be a good subject for a post.
There's a group out of Kansas (associated with the university) called Monarch Watch. They are highly active in tracking monarch butterfly populations and getting the public involved in tracking butterflies. It's kind of the lepidopteran version of birding! Anyway, they have kits for interested folks to tag butterflies.
The butterfly tags are essentially stickers, which are stuck to the underside of the hindwings of captured butterflies. When a person signs up to be a monarch watcher and to tag butterflies, he/she gets a set of stickers with a specific number on them - a number assigned to that person. It's very much the same as bird banding, although you have to have a special license to do bird banding.
About seven years ago the Newcomb VIC had a butterfly "event" and a fellow from up near Tupper Lake came down and did tagging with the kids. It was a big success.
For more information, visit their website at http://www.monarchwatch.org/ .
And check out this website for an interesting article about tagging bumblebees: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7258822.stm !
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