Bogong moth tracker launched in face of 'unprecedented' collapse in numbers

New website asks Australians to record sightings of insect that is main food source of the mountain pygmy possum

Lisa Cox

Tue 17 Sep 2019 09.11 BSTLast modified on Tue 17 Sep 2019 09.13 BST

Every spring, 4.4 billion bogong moths migrate up to 1,000km to the alpine regions of Victoria and New South Wales ahead of the summer heat.

But for the past two years, the number of moths that have made the journey to those areas from breeding grounds in Queensland, NSW and western Victoria has crashed to almost undetectable levels and scientists are turning to the community for help.

A new website, led by Zoos Victoria, is asking Australians to take a photo if they think they see a bogong moth, and to record when and where they saw it.

Called Moth Tracker, the website has been set up to try gather information on the migration routes of the bogong moth and what the coming summer will bring for the species and animals that rely on them.

That includes the mountain pygmy possum, a critically endangered marsupial that hibernates for five to seven months of the year. Just 2,000 of them remain in the wild.

When the possum emerges from under the snow, the bogong moth is its main food source.

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Decline in bogong moth numbers leaves mountain pygmy possums starving

Exclusive: climate change linked to ‘astonishing’ drop in Australian moth numbers, the key food source for possums while breeding

Graham Readfearn

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.

Read on

Moths fly 1000 kilometres with Earth’s magnetic field as a guide

21 June 2018

Eric Warrant

By Michael Marshall and Andy Coghlan

An Australian moth uses the Earth’s magnetic field to help find its way across the continent. While other insects have been shown to navigate using Earth’s magnetic field, the moth is the first to do so over long distances and at night.

Bogong moths (Agrotis infusa), like the famous monarch butterflies in the Americas, make an epic migration. In spring, about 2 billion of them leave their breeding grounds on the dry, flat plains of south-east Australia, and fly over 1000 kilometres to …

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Researcher investigating navigation system of bogong moth

December 21, 2015 by Anne Craig

Barrie Frost at the research site.

An international team of researchers that includes Barrie Frost is hoping to unravel the mystery of how bogong moths navigate during their annual migration to and from caves in the Snowy Mountains of southeastern Australia. Millions of these night-flying moths, which are crucial to the survival of nearly every species in the Snowy Mountains, live in these caves during the summer months to escape the heat.

Dr. Frost, director of the Visual and Auditory Neuroscience Lab at Queen's, had previously created a flight simulatorto help study the navigation of monarch butterflies. The data generated during that study indicated that monarch butterflies use an internal time compensated sun compass to migrate. The flight simulator device has been adapted for use in the bogong moth study.

"The bogong is an iconic moth. It's been used by the Aboriginals for feasts for centuries. We needed to learn more about it," he says. "The question is how can the moth hatch as an adult and immediately fly south 2,000 kilometres to the Snowy Mountains having never been there before and having no one to show them."

For this project, Dr. Frost created an upgraded, computerized flight simulator specifically designed for moths. He used Google Earth to create an accurate moving image of the ground the moths are flying over. When the moth is flying in the simulator the ground is programmed to always move backward, no matter what direction they choose, which encourages them to keep flying.

The scientists collected the moths by setting up an enormous spotlight to attract them. When they landed, Dr. Frost and his co-researchers gathered up all the moths. They glued a small sensor to their back called a stalk, wired the stalk to a computer and then suspended them in the flight simulator using wires with air blowing to keep them aloft. The computer tracked their direction of travel.

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