Every spring in the southern hemisphere, Bogong lines migrate up to 621 miles (1,000 kilometers) from southeastern 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 bilateral journey only once in its life as it knows where it goes?
A team led by David Dreyer, visiting a research companion in Sensical Biology at Lund University, suggests that Bogong -tunes can use the star sky – among other tools – to navigate in the right direction. If this proves to be true, Dreyer and his colleagues claim that it would make the Australian Bogong Tint the first known invertebrate to “use the stars to ascertain specific geographic directions (this is a direction relative to the north) for a directed long-distance navigation to a remote purpose,” the team wrote in a new study, published today in the journal, In the newspaper in the newspaper, published today in the newspaper, published in a new study, published today in the newspaper, published in the newspaper, Nature.
In 2018, the same researchers suggested That Bogong -inas reach their destinations by both a sense of the Earth’s magnetic field and by unknown visual milestones. In fact, as noted a Natural news and views ItemSome animals rely on several different navigation methods. To test whether the night sky plays a role in leading the moths, the team captured the insects at the beginning of their migration and put them in a planetarium-like simulator.
“By linking spring and autumn migrant moths in a flight simulator, we found that under naturalistic lunar night skies and in a canceled geomagnetic field (preventing the familiar magnetic sense of the moth), moths flew in their seasonal appropriate migrant directions,” the researchers explained in the study.
As ancient sailors would witness, the foreseeable positions of stars make them a reliable navigation tool. However, 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 lineBut they are not migratory insects they do not use star signs for long-distance travel such as birds and Bogong monsters.
Analyzing the moth’s brain, scientists also proved that neurons linked to a 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 directed south.” In other words, their brains seem to be wired to pick up star characters.
However, the parts of the starry sky, which moths specifically rely on directions, remain a mystery, especially since it is not clear whether moths can even see individual stars. The researchers theorize that the moths can probably see the milk path, while constellations, the moon and possibly dark features on the horizon could also serve as reliable navigation indications.
Ultimately, the study is based on the team’s previous research by further lighting of Bogong Moth’s directional gear. “Our results suggest that Bogong moods use star signs and the magnetic field of the Earth to create a robust compass system for a long-distance night sailing to a specific destination,” the researchers have finished.
The next time intense Solar activity causes GPS to stopI bet we all want we would be Bogong Tintae.
