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Current Research

Urban Lights and Lepidoptera Project

Urban environments are a built and natural mosaic of habitat for both humans and wildlife alike. We are investigating the effects of urbanization, light, and sound pollution on nocturnal critters. We focus on the ways in which moths, bats, and other light attracted insects are affected by varying levels of light pollution in the impervious and natural spaces of the heart of the city, parks and residential areas. We hope to disentangle how light and urban gradients of the city directly interface with our nocturnal neighbors

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Light on the Landscape - How light regimes in protected areas affect bats and their prey

Through a partnership with Grand Teton National Park (funded via a CESU) Masters student Hunter Cole is measuring bat activity and insect diversity around experimental streetlights near Colter Bay, the largest visitor center in the park. We have installed custom streetlights, designed in collaboration with Philips/Signify, that allow us to alter both the color (red or white) and intensity of all the lights in a large three-pronged parking lot. We aim to test if red light can "rewild the night sky" and return bat and insect activity to dark baseline levels.

Anti-bat strategies in moths

Our work has shown that some moths generate their own ultrasonic sounds to jam bat sonar and others use long spinning hindwing tails to divert bat attack to these expendable appendages! These spectacular predator-prey interactions, and the high-speed videos that accompany them, are some of the most compelling animal behavior stories and perfect for educating and exciting people about the mystery and beauty of the natural world.

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This work is part of a long term collaboration with the Kawahara Lab at the McGuire Center for Lepidoptera and Biodiversity at the University of Florida has focused on anti-bat strategies in Bombycoid moths (hawkmoths and saturniids) (NSF-IOS, Nat Geo).

Widespread anti-bat ultrasonic mimicry rings in moths: a global study

Over the course of 5 years the Barber and Kawahara Labs have traveled to numerous countries in the Old and New World, testing hundreds of moths for ultrasonic sound production in response to the attacking cries of echolocating bats (Nat Geo CRE, Nat Geo YEG, Nourages Travel Grants). We find that ultrasonic response to bats is more common than previously predicted and that sound producing moths form biogeographically-determined mimicry rings across the worldā€™s tropics. 

Revealing the Mechanism of an Anti-Bat Sensory Illusion

The Barber lab has previously demonstrated that the long hindwing tails of saturniid moths create a sensory illusion for bats, diverting their attacks away from the moth's body and towards the less rewarding hindwings. However, the exact mechanism behind how these hindwing structures deceive their bat predators remains uncertain. To investigate this phenomenon, we pit big brown bats (Eptesicus fuscus) against luna moths (Actias luna) with and without hindwing tails. We are recording these interactions using a combination of high-speed video cameras and an 88-ultrasonic-microphone array, to determine how the bat's echolocation strategy and capture success are affected by the presence or absence of hindwing tails.

How do moths deceive bats with their hindwing tails?

Many moths within the Saturniidae family are characterized by having rippled, twist and cupped hindwing tails.  Such structures have been demonstrated to act as a secondary defense mechanism against insectivorous bats. Our hypothesis of the working mechanism is that these moths modify their acoustic glints available in the returning echo, as to deceive their predatorā€™s perception, with their tails. However, the underlying mechanism remains unknown. We are looking to understand this mechanism by conducting a series of ensonification experiments to obtain the acoustic image of moths, coupled with geometric morphometrics to understand the role of the tail morphology in the acoustic signal. 

Effects of wildfire on bats

ā€‹Wildfires are natural forces that shape the ecology and evolution of myriad organisms. In recent years, anthropogenic effects have increased the aridity, temperature and prevalence of pests and diseases throughout the forests of the Western United States. This has led to a dramatic increase in fire severity and extent over the past several decades, which are predicted to only increase as the effects of climate change worsen. For this project, we aim to understand how wildfires impact bat sensory and community ecology. We work on large-scale controlled burns alongside the United States Forest Service (USFS) as part of the Fire and Smoke Model Evaluation Experiment (FASMEE).

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