Latest news with #DavidDreyer
10 hours ago
- Science
This Australian moth uses the stars as a compass to travel hundreds of miles
NEW YORK -- An Australian moth follows the stars during its yearly migration, using the night sky as a guiding compass, according to a new study. When temperatures heat up, nocturnal Bogong moths fly about 620 miles (1,000 kilometers) to cool down in caves by the Australian Alps. They later return home to breed and die. Birds routinely navigate by starlight, but the moths are the first known invertebrates, or creatures without a backbone, to find their way across such long distances using the stars. Scientists have long wondered how the moths travel to a place they've never been. A previous study hinted that Earth's magnetic field might help steer them in the right direction, along with some kind of visual landmark as a guide. Since stars appear in predictable patterns each night, scientists suspected they might help lead the way. They placed moths in a flight simulator that mimicked the night sky above them and blocked out the Earth's magnetic field, noting where they flew. Then they scrambled the stars and saw how the moths reacted. When the stars were as they should be, the moths flapped in the right direction. But when the stars were in random places, the moths were disoriented. Their brain cells also got excited in response to specific orientations of the night sky. The findings were published Wednesday in the journal Nature. It 'was a very clean, impressive demonstration that the moths really are using a view of the night sky to guide their movements,' said Kenneth Lohmann, who studies animal navigation at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and was not involved with the new research. Researchers don't know what features of the night sky the moths use to find their way. It could be a stripe of light from the Milky Way, a colorful nebula or something else entirely. Whatever it is, the insects seem to rely on that along with Earth's magnetic field to make their journey. Other animals harness the stars as a guide. Birds take celestial cues as they soar through the skies and dung beetles roll their remains short distances while using the Milky Way to stay on course. It's an impressive feat for Bogong moths whose brains are smaller than size of a grain of rice to rely on the night sky for their odyssey, said study author David Dreyer with Lund University in Sweden. 'It's remarkable that an animal with such a tiny brain can actually do this,' Dreyer said. ___ The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute's Science and Educational Media Group and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The AP is solely responsible for all content.
San Francisco Chronicle
11 hours ago
- Science
- San Francisco Chronicle
This Australian moth uses the stars as a compass to travel hundreds of miles
NEW YORK (AP) — An Australian moth follows the stars during its yearly migration, using the night sky as a guiding compass, according to a new study. When temperatures heat up, nocturnal Bogong moths fly about 620 miles (1,000 kilometers) to cool down in caves by the Australian Alps. They later return home to breed and die. Birds routinely navigate by starlight, but the moths are the first known invertebrates, or creatures without a backbone, to find their way across such long distances using the stars. Scientists have long wondered how the moths travel to a place they've never been. A previous study hinted that Earth's magnetic field might help steer them in the right direction, along with some kind of visual landmark as a guide. Since stars appear in predictable patterns each night, scientists suspected they might help lead the way. They placed moths in a flight simulator that mimicked the night sky above them and blocked out the Earth's magnetic field, noting where they flew. Then they scrambled the stars and saw how the moths reacted. When the stars were as they should be, the moths flapped in the right direction. But when the stars were in random places, the moths were disoriented. Their brain cells also got excited in response to specific orientations of the night sky. The findings were published Wednesday in the journal Nature. It 'was a very clean, impressive demonstration that the moths really are using a view of the night sky to guide their movements,' said Kenneth Lohmann, who studies animal navigation at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and was not involved with the new research. Researchers don't know what features of the night sky the moths use to find their way. It could be a stripe of light from the Milky Way, a colorful nebula or something else entirely. Whatever it is, the insects seem to rely on that along with Earth's magnetic field to make their journey. Other animals harness the stars as a guide. Birds take celestial cues as they soar through the skies and dung beetles roll their remains short distances while using the Milky Way to stay on course. It's an impressive feat for Bogong moths whose brains are smaller than size of a grain of rice to rely on the night sky for their odyssey, said study author David Dreyer with Lund University in Sweden. 'It's remarkable that an animal with such a tiny brain can actually do this,' Dreyer said. ___
Winnipeg Free Press
12 hours ago
- Science
- Winnipeg Free Press
This Australian moth uses the stars as a compass to travel hundreds of miles
NEW YORK (AP) — An Australian moth follows the stars during its yearly migration, using the night sky as a guiding compass, according to a new study. When temperatures heat up, nocturnal Bogong moths fly about 620 miles (1,000 kilometers) to cool down in caves by the Australian Alps. They later return home to breed and die. Birds routinely navigate by starlight, but the moths are the first known invertebrates, or creatures without a backbone, to find their way across such long distances using the stars. Scientists have long wondered how the moths travel to a place they've never been. A previous study hinted that Earth's magnetic field might help steer them in the right direction, along with some kind of visual landmark as a guide. Since stars appear in predictable patterns each night, scientists suspected they might help lead the way. They placed moths in a flight simulator that mimicked the night sky above them and blocked out the Earth's magnetic field, noting where they flew. Then they scrambled the stars and saw how the moths reacted. When the stars were as they should be, the moths flapped in the right direction. But when the stars were in random places, the moths were disoriented. Their brain cells also got excited in response to specific orientations of the night sky. The findings were published Wednesday in the journal Nature. It 'was a very clean, impressive demonstration that the moths really are using a view of the night sky to guide their movements,' said Kenneth Lohmann, who studies animal navigation at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and was not involved with the new research. Researchers don't know what features of the night sky the moths use to find their way. It could be a stripe of light from the Milky Way, a colorful nebula or something else entirely. Whatever it is, the insects seem to rely on that along with Earth's magnetic field to make their journey. Other animals harness the stars as a guide. Birds take celestial cues as they soar through the skies and dung beetles roll their remains short distances while using the Milky Way to stay on course. It's an impressive feat for Bogong moths whose brains are smaller than size of a grain of rice to rely on the night sky for their odyssey, said study author David Dreyer with Lund University in Sweden. 'It's remarkable that an animal with such a tiny brain can actually do this,' Dreyer said. ___ The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute's Science and Educational Media Group and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The AP is solely responsible for all content.
Gizmodo
12 hours ago
- Science
- Gizmodo
Bogong Moths Are First Bugs Known to Use Stars for Long-Distance Travel
Every spring in the Southern Hemisphere, Bogong moths migrate up to 621 miles (1,000 kilometers) from southeast Australia to spend the summer in cool caves in the Australian Alps. At the beginning of the fall, they fly back to their breeding grounds and die. Each moth undertakes the two-way journey only once in its life—so how does it know where it's going? A team led by David Dreyer, a visiting research fellow in sensory biology at Lund University, suggests that Bogong moths may use the starry sky—among other tools—to navigate in the right direction. If this proves to be true, Dreyer and his colleagues claim it would make the Australian Bogong moth the first known invertebrate to 'use the stars for discerning specific geographical directions (that is, a direction relative to north) for directed long-range navigation to a distant goal,' the team wrote in a new study, published today in the journal Nature. In 2018, the same researchers suggested that Bogong moths reach their destinations by both sensing Earth's magnetic field and by using unknown visual landmarks. In fact, as noted by a Nature News and Views article, some animals rely on several different navigational methods. To test whether the night sky plays a role in guiding the moths, the team captured the insects at the start of their migration and placed them in a planetarium-like simulator. 'By tethering spring and autumn migratory moths in a flight simulator, we found that, under naturalistic moonless night skies and in a nulled geomagnetic field (disabling the moth's known magnetic sense), moths flew in their seasonally appropriate migratory directions,' the researchers explained in the study. As ancient seafarers would attest, the predictable positions of stars make them a reliable navigational tool. Nonetheless, scientists have previously documented only some night-migratory birds using starlight to find a specific geographical direction. Dung Beetles use the stars to travel in a straight line, but they are not migratory insects—they're not using stellar cues for long-distance travel like birds and Bogong moths do. By analyzing the moth's brain, the scientists also demonstrated that neurons linked to vision 'responded specifically to rotations of the night sky and were tuned to a common sky orientation,' showing the greatest activity 'when the moth was headed southwards.' In other words, their brains appear to be wired to pick up on stellar cues. However, the parts of the starry sky that moths specifically rely on for directions remain a mystery, especially since it is unclear whether moths can even see individual stars. The researchers theorize that the moths can likely see the Milky Way, while constellations, the Moon, and potentially dark features on the horizon might also serve as reliable navigational cues. Ultimately, the study builds on the team's previous research by further illuminating the Bogong moth's directional toolkit. 'Our results suggest that Bogong moths use stellar cues and the Earth's magnetic field to create a robust compass system for long-distance nocturnal navigation towards a specific destination,' the researchers concluded. The next time intense solar activity causes GPS blackouts, I bet we'll all be wishing we were Bogong moths.
