User:Barbara (WVS)/Monarch butterfly tagging

At least one tagged butterfly made a trip of 4,635 km (2,880 miles).

A tagged monarch in Lincoln, Nebraska, was recovered in Paullina, Iowa, 158 miles in 18 days.

A tagged monarch in Geneva, Kentucky, was recovered in Lindsborg, Kansas, some 550 miles west of its origin, and was considered "the most unusual migrant" of the 1998 season (most migration is north-south).

The official record for the longest tag-recovery is for a monarch tagged by Don Davis, from Ontario, Canada. This record is listed in the Guinness Book of Records for the longest insect migration. It was a monarch tagged in southern Ontario during the fall of 1988, that traveled to Mexico and then north again in the spring where it was recovered in Texas, for a grand total of 4,635 km (2,880 miles). This record assumed the monarch traveled to Mexico and back north in the spring. Also, the straight line distance from the tag site to the overwintering site was 3,429 km (2,131 miles). In fall 2015, a new (unofficial) record was set by a tagger from Nova Scotia, Canada – Larry Bogan, who tagged a monarch that was recovered in Mexico, for a distance of 4,330 km (2,690 miles).

While the practice of transferring monarchs from place to place is generally not condoned by scientists, some reciprocal transfers of tagged monarchs have demonstrated that monarchs from east of the Rocky Mountains will migrate south if transferred west, in the range of the western population (rather than SW). Monarchs transferred from Nebraska to Oregon also migrate south.