Monarch butterfly migration cues depend on the Sun

Eli Shlizerman, Data Science Fellow and Assistant Professor in Applied Mathematics and Electrical Engineering, and his biologist colleagues published a model for a sun compass used by monarch butterflies for navigation during their annual migration. Modeling data from butterfly neurons in the attennae and eyes, they identified that input cues from the Sun alone can reproduce observed migration patterns.

Their findings are published in the journal Cell Reports and highlighed on BBC News.