Migrating bogong moths use the stars and Earth’s magnetic field to find ancestral summer caves each year. Genetic programming?
Posted by freedomforall 1 week, 4 days ago to Science
Excerpt:
"To get here, these moths have flown from all over southeast Australia through the spring, arriving from as far away as south-eastern Queensland and far-western Victoria. Converted to human body length, these journeys of roughly 1,000 kilometres would be equivalent to a person circumnavigating Earth twice.
The moths’ marathon voyages to the Alps are likely undertaken to escape the lethal heat of the coming summer in their breeding areas. When the cool of autumn arrives, the moths leave the mountains to produce their own offspring and die.
Map of southeast Australia showing arrows from western Victoria, northwest NSW, and southern Queensland leading to the mountains in the southeast.
Every summer, bogong moths travel up to 1,000 kilometres to sleep through the heat in cool mountain caves. Eric Warrant
But how on Earth do they know how to find these caves? How do they know the direction to travel and how do they know when they’ve arrived?
These questions have fascinated me and the other members of my research group for many years. It turns out bogong moths possess a most extraordinary ability to navigate, harnessing Earth’s magnetic field and the stars as compasses to follow their inherited migratory direction."
"To get here, these moths have flown from all over southeast Australia through the spring, arriving from as far away as south-eastern Queensland and far-western Victoria. Converted to human body length, these journeys of roughly 1,000 kilometres would be equivalent to a person circumnavigating Earth twice.
The moths’ marathon voyages to the Alps are likely undertaken to escape the lethal heat of the coming summer in their breeding areas. When the cool of autumn arrives, the moths leave the mountains to produce their own offspring and die.
Map of southeast Australia showing arrows from western Victoria, northwest NSW, and southern Queensland leading to the mountains in the southeast.
Every summer, bogong moths travel up to 1,000 kilometres to sleep through the heat in cool mountain caves. Eric Warrant
But how on Earth do they know how to find these caves? How do they know the direction to travel and how do they know when they’ve arrived?
These questions have fascinated me and the other members of my research group for many years. It turns out bogong moths possess a most extraordinary ability to navigate, harnessing Earth’s magnetic field and the stars as compasses to follow their inherited migratory direction."
