Winged Adventures in the Hangar

To welcome two new insect species, the Imaging Hangar has made quite the transformation. It is covered with camouflage netting and smells of delicious flowers to help two hawkmoth species show off their intricate set of flight manoeuvres: the diurnal hummingbird hawkmoth, and the nocturnal elephant hawkmoth. For the first time ever, we can track the animals at high resolution over such a large 3D space and flexibly vary the ambient light intensity to natural conditions. The goal of this project is to reveal how the visual environment alters the animals’ flight performance and how these alterations might aid the acquisition of visual information; this can be particularly important in challenging light environments: in very dim light, or when light levels change suddenly. Moreover, by including extreme conditions, such as artificial light, we will shed light on the impact of light pollution on natural flight behaviour of nocturnal insects.