Harmonic radar tags for insect tracking: Lightweight, low-cost, and accessible

Authors: Siderhurst, Matthew; Ladizinsky, Nicolas; Hurst, Anika; Sim, Sheina

Submitted to: Journal of Visualized Experiments
Publication Type: Peer Reviewed Journal
Publication Acceptance Date: 4/25/2025
Publication Date: 5/13/2025
Citation: Siderhurst, M.S., Ladizinsky, N.C., Hurst, A.L., Sim, S.B. 2025. Harmonic radar tags for insect tracking: Lightweight, low-cost, and accessible. Journal of Visualized Experiments. (219), Article e67812. https://doi.org/10.3791/67812.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.3791/67812

Interpretive Summary: Insects are horticultural pests throughout the world. Understanding how they move is critical to finding new ways to control pest insects. Recent advances have made it possible to track individual insects as they move around farms, urban areas, and other habitats. Information on how insects move in different environments under different conditions will allow more effective responses to pest invasions and outbreaks. In this video, we will show how to make tags, attach tags to insects, track these tagged insects, and we will provide you with some representative tracking results. We will be demonstrating the use of an off-the-shelf transceiver marketed for backcountry rescue. Together, inexpensive tags and off-the-shelf transceivers make this insect tracking technique highly accessible to entomologists looking to study insect behavior and ecology.

Technical Abstract: Using tracking devices to follow animal movements has long been a standard approach for studying the behavior and ecology of vertebrates. Until relatively recently, these tracking methods have been unavailable to entomologists due to the prohibitively large size and mass of the tracking devices that must be attached. Technologies applied to insect tracking include radio telemetry, Bluetooth, RFID, and harmonic radar. Of these, radio telemetry is the most used method to track larger insects. It offers longer detection range and unique signals for each tracked insect but requires expensive tags which have limited shelf and field life and are heavy, generally at least 150 milligrams. By contrast, harmonic radar tags are lighter by at least an order of magnitude, inexpensive, and have detection ranges which allow field tracking of many smaller insects. We will also be demonstrating the use of an off-the-shelf transceiver marketed for backcountry rescue. Together, inexpensive tags and off-the-shelf transceivers make this insect tracking technique highly accessible to entomologists looking to study insect behavior and ecology. In this video, we will touch on making tags, attaching tags to insects, tracking these tagged insects, and we will provide you with some representative tracking results.