Exclusive: climate
change linked to ‘astonishing’ drop in Australian moth numbers, the key food
source for possums while breeding
Sun 24
Feb 2019 23.01 GMTLast modified on Mon 25 Feb
2019 06.19 GMT
Numbers
of unique Australian moths that migrate in their billions to alpine areas have
crashed, ecologists say, putting extra pressure on the endangered mountain
pygmy possum.
Scientists
believe the “astonishing” drop in bogong moth numbers is linked to climate
change and recent droughts in areas where the moths breed.
At the
same time checks on the endangered mountain pygmy possum, which exists only in
Australia’s alpine regions, have revealed dead litters in the pouches of
females. The moths are a key food source for the possums as they wake from
hibernation.
In
2018, scientists
revealed bogong moths were the only known insect to use the
earth’s magnetic field to help them navigate from grasslands in northern New
South Wales and southern Queensland – sometimes at distances of 1,000km. Around
two billion moths are estimated to make the journey.
The
ecologist Dr Ken Green has been monitoring bogong moths for 40 years. He said:
“Last summer numbers were atrocious. It was not just really bad, it was the
worst I had ever seen. Now this year it’s got even worse.”
The moths
find caves and cracks in boulders to hide away in a torpor state. A cave at
Mount Gingera, near Canberra, has been known to house millions of the moths but
last month Green and colleagues counted just three individuals. Searches of
about 50 known sites have turned up similar catastrophic absences.
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