In this activity, students place small stickers (tags) onto caught or newly emerged monarch butterflies and release them into the environment. The tag number, information about the butterfly and its release location are entered into the Moths and Butterflies of New Zealand Trust’s ‘Record a tagged butterfly’ release page.
The Trust reports that tagging starts again in February 2025, and will probably run until May each year when it will be assumed that monarchs are overwintering all over the country.
By the end of this activity, students should be able to:
- explain what tagging is and why tagging is used
- describe the experience of tagging their own butterflies
- record and enter data into the MBNZT online database
- understand the relationship between releasing and recovering tagged butterflies
- appreciate that citizen scientists work in partnership with scientists to answer interesting and relevant questions.
Download the Word file (see link below) for:
- introduction/background notes
- instructions on what you need and what to do
- discussion questions.
Nature of science
Scientists use tagging so they can monitor an individual’s behaviour in a natural setting. In this case, information about overwintering and population numbers can only be collected in the butterfly’s natural settings.
Related content
Learn more about monarch butterflies and the important work of citizen scientists.
Electronic tagging of many other types of animals is common, but tagging marine invertebrates is very unusual, read about tagging sea stars.
Participate in one of the citizen science projects below that have a focus on butterflies and moths:
- Big Butterfly Count – this project, run by MBNZT collects data about butterflies in our gardens, schools, parks and farms – any location in the country or on the outer islands. This is usually held over one weekend in February.
- Ahi Pepe MothNet – a Participatory Science Platform initiative that investigates the distribution and ecology of our native and introduced moth species.
- The Pieris Project – an international project working on DNA profiling white butterflies to determine their ancestry and origin.
Useful links
Visit the tagging monarchs section on the Moths and Butterflies of New Zealand Trust website to learn more about tagging butterflies.
Monarch Watch (USA) is an educational outreach programme that engages citizen scientists in large-scale research projects. It involves more than 2,000 schools, nature centres and other organisations in the US and Canada, and an estimated 100,000+ students and adults participate in tagging activities each fall.
This Stuff news article includes a video of a citizen scientist tagging a monarch butterfly.
