Is Tagging Adversely Affecting Monarch Butterflies?

As evident from my artwork, I'm fascinated by insects, particularly lepidoptera (butterflies and moths).  At the end of my street, here in Cleveland, Ohio, is Wendy Island, which has been a major stopping off point/waystation for monarchs migrating across Lake Erie from Canada, through Ohio on their way south, hopefully to winter in Mexico.  I frequently stop by Wendy Island to view the migrating monarchs.  

One thing that has concerned me over the years is the tagging of the monarchs with stickers as part of the Monarch Watch study.  For years, I’ve been banging on about the potential detriment of sticker tagging of monarch butterflies, do the tags harm, overly burden them, but I was ignored/told to shut up by the taggers.  My emails to Monarch Watch have gone unreplied. 

Per the tag placement image below, the adhesive tags are placed on the wing (e.g. in northern USA/Canada) and when the butterfly lands/is caught (e.g. in Mexico) the tag is read and the migration determined.

However, a butterfly wing is a highly complex structure of beams and membranes that flex during the upward/downward wing motion.  Sticking a tag on surely affects that highly evolved wing structure to the detriment of the butterfly.

This video from University of Virginia, while directed at dragonflies, conveys the concept of the flexible wings. 

Today I found out that the wing weighs 12mg while the tag weighs 8mg - Jaysus! Imagine someone strapping a weight of 2/3 of yer leg to yer leg and then saying “off you go!” - you’d be fecked in no time. mg = milligram.  

Further, supposedly only 1% of all tags are recovered in the south - that’s a diabolically low recovery rate!

Apparently the tagging system was developed in 1992 - back then, there were no high speed cameras capturing wing motion or mathematical modeling of wings.  I'd venture the research was/is severely hampered by the available technology, and no one has questioned it since.

While the Monarch Watch study is a valiant effort to understand monarch migration, the tagging study is surely negatively affecting the very insect that the study is trying to study! That’s not good!  I admire the work of Monarch Watch regarding understanding and preserving monarchs, but the tagging approach appears to be highly flawed.  

I'd love to hear back from Monarch Watch, but I've never received a response to my emails. 

Above images copyright Monarch Watch.  

Painting my monarch watercolor