Bogong moths use a stellar compass for long-distance navigation at night.

ABSTRACT: Each spring, billions of Bogong moths escape hot conditions across southeast Australia by migrating up to 1,000 km to a place that they have never previously visited-a limited number of cool caves in the Australian Alps, historically used for aestivating over summer^1,2. At the beginning of autumn, the same individuals make a return migration to their breeding grounds to reproduce and die. Here we show that Bogong moths use the starry night sky as a compass to distinguish between specific geographical directions, thereby navigating in their inherited migratory direction towards their distant goal. By tethering spring and autumn migratory moths in a flight simulator^3-5, we found that, under naturalistic moonless night skies and in a nulled geomagnetic field (disabling t

SUBMITTER: Dreyer D 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC12286839 | biostudies-literature | 2025 Jul

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature