Student's device enables researchers to easily track elusive insects


Date:
February 24, 2022
Source:
Florida Museum of Natural History
Summary:
With some home security software and a little ingenuity, researchers
have developed an inexpensive device that will allow them to study
the behavior and activity of insects in regions of the world where
they're most diverse.



FULL STORY ==========================================================================
With some home security software and a little ingenuity, researchers
have developed an inexpensive device that will allow them to study the
behavior and activity of insects in regions of the world where they're
most diverse.


========================================================================== Insects are easily the largest group of organisms on the planet, and
with species inhabiting every continent, including Antarctica, they're
also ubiquitous. Yet compared to birds and mammals, scientists know very
little about when most insects are awake and active, which is especially
true of nocturnal species that fly under the obscuring veil of darkness.

"Most of what we know regarding insect behavior is from species that
are active during the day," said Akito Kawahara, curator of the McGuire
Center for Lepidoptera and Biodiversity at the Florida Museum of Natural History and co- author of a new study describing the device. "We study butterflies, bees and ants because we can see them, but there are hundreds
of thousands of nocturnal insects out there, all of which have been
nearly impossible to track until now." Knowing when organisms are most
active is the foundation for understanding their behaviors and circadian rhythms -- patterns that determine when they look for food, reproduce, pollinate flowers and more. Without this basic information for insects,
it's harder to predict or determine how changes in the environment,
like an increase in light pollution, might impact them.

But the tinier the animal, the harder it is to track. Insects are
generally too small to carry around tracking devices that would cue in biologists to their movements. Instead, researchers have to lure them
in with baits or lights, which only paint a partial picture of their
activity.

"You might think a moth is nocturnal because it's only been seen at
night, but that doesn't mean it's not out during the day. It just might
not have been seen," said lead author Yash Sondhi, a Ph.D. student at
Florida International University co-advised by Kawahara. "We wanted to
look past the standard nocturnal or diurnal categories that could be
an oversimplification." For years, Kawahara tried to find a portable
device that would allow him to track insects while working in the field
with his collaborator Jesse Barber at Boise State University, at times
even attempting to outsource the work to companies in the hopes they
could build it for him. But equipment sensitive enough to measure the
delicate movements of the smallest moths while being durable enough to
hold up in harsh environments and remote locations without electricity
or internet proved difficult to engineer.



==========================================================================
So when Sondhi offered to try creating it himself, Kawahara was
thrilled. "We had put the project aside, but Yash was able to come along
and build the device we'd always envisioned," he said.

Sondhi gathered a microcomputer, open-source motion tracking software,
sensors, a camera and all-important infrared lights that don't disturb
or confuse insects. He housed all of this in a mesh cage that looks
like a laundry hamper, and the portable locomotion activity monitor,
called pLAM, was born.

It can be built for under $100, a tiny fraction of the lab-based
technology that cost anywhere between $1,000 to $4,000.

After using pLAM to monitor insect activity in the lab to ensure the
equipment was running smoothly, Sondhi and Kawahara tested it on a
research trip to Costa Rica. They collected 15 species, placing between
four and eight moths of each into the activity monitors.

Sondhi says one of the most interesting examples was a species of
tiger moth.

It's assumed these brightly colored, toxic moths are exclusively out
during the day, because predators steer clear of them and they can
move about without fear of being eaten. However, data from the activity monitors revealed they're also active at dusk. After all, they have to
escape other predators who come out at nightfall, like bats.



==========================================================================
"It was so cool to see the different activity patterns," Sondhi said. "Not everything is as black and white as we think. Now, we can predict
and better understand what's driving when insects fly. The goal is to
quantify when they are active and then associate that with their traits
-- for example, if a moth is dull-colored, beige, does that mean it's
strictly nocturnal?" Kawahara is optimistic that the new device will help inform efforts to stave off the recent global trend of insect decline and extinction. "The baseline data that we need to understand the activity of
small insects and other organisms is so limited," he said. "We talk about
how light pollution, noise pollution and climate change impact insects,
but we don't know anything about how it affects their activity because
we haven't been able to monitor activity for most insect species. This
device will allow us to collect that information." This year, Sondhi
will be using this new tool to continue his National Geographic-funded
research on how moths respond to light pollution. He's collected data
on the differing light levels at several field sites in India.

Now, he can examine how light pollution could be confusing moths,
interfering with their natural circadian patterns and impacting when
they are active.

The research was published in Methods in Ecology and Evolution.

Funding for the study was provided by the Florida International University Graduate School, the National Science Foundation, a Tropical Conservation
Grant from the Susan Levine Foundation, a Lewis Clark Exploration
Grant from the American Philosophical Society, a National Geographic
Explorer Grant and the Centers for Disease Control, Southeastern Center
of Excellence in Vector-borne Disease.

========================================================================== Story Source: Materials provided by
Florida_Museum_of_Natural_History. Original written by Angela Nicoletti
and Jerald Pinson. Note: Content may be edited for style and length.


========================================================================== Journal Reference:
1. Yash Sondhi, Nicolas J. Jo, Britney Alpizar, Amanda Markee,
Hailey E.

Dansby, John Paul Currea, Samuel T. Fabian, Carlos Ruiz, Elina
Barredo, Pablo Allen, Matthew DeGennaro, Akito Y. Kawahara, Jamie
C. Theobald.

Portable locomotion activity monitor ( pLAM ): A
cost‐effective setup for robust activity tracking in
small animals. Methods in Ecology and Evolution, 2022; DOI:
10.1111/2041-210X.13809 ==========================================================================

Link to news story: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2022/02/220224120640.htm

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