Florida Museum of Natural History lepidopterist Akito Kawahara and Boise State University researcher Jesse Barber explain their new collaborative study on the interactions between hawkmoths and bats. By combining their efforts in the field, the researchers have been able to answer questions about the evolution of hawkmoth that were previously unknown.
Interview and videos produced by Jason Mathis for Explore Research at the University of Florida.
Transcript
Akito Kawahara: So this study is really different from your typical phylogenetic study in the sense that we have two labs that are working together, in collaboration, to study the evolution of behavior in this group of moths. So what we do is we bring a team from the University of Florida, Florida Museum of Natural History, usually involves several students and myself, and then we have a collaborating institution, Boise State University, COPI Jesse Barber and his students will come together.
The idea is to link these two different labs that focus on different research areas. The research that takes place in my lab focuses on the evolution of these moths, and my collaborator works on the behavior of the same moths. So we go into the field together and we study the behavior of these moths, how they interact with bats in particular, and try to understand the evolution of the moths at the same time.
Most studies typically focus on one organism and study their behavior of that particular organism. Our approach is very different. We’ve decided that the best way to do this is to go into the field together and do this research synchronously, two labs together, and really understand the behavior of these organisms at the same time obtaining the DNA sequences of a broad array of many different species at the same time. By doing so you actually get a very clear understanding of how the behaviors have evolved across the whole group, as opposed to just studying one particular species.
Jesse Barber: One of the main reasons this work is so important is that we’re figuring out how a large group of the Earth’s biodiversity have evolved. Moths represent about 200,000 described species, one of the most specious groups of insects, and bats are the most specious group of mammals next to rodents, with over a thousand species, and this one question we’re trying to answer during these experiments, concerning hawk moth anti-bat sounds, is just a slice of all of the anti-bat strategies that are going on in the bat/moth arms race.
Collaboration is something that’s really common in science these days, but a lot of it is electronic collaboration where people are working on projects together but most of the interaction is through email. Akito and I’s collaboration is an in the field in-person collaboration.
The reason this collaboration is working so well is because the science is working so well. We’re able to answer questions with phylogeny and behavior together that we couldn’t alone and so by starting inroads into this area and working together we really think that there’s a lot of room for us to uncover patterns of the way life is evolved in really critical groups of animals.
Learn more about the Kawahara Lab at the Florida Museum
Learn more about the McGuire Center for Lepidoptera and Biodiversity at the Florida Museum