The bat-bird-bug battle: daily flight activity of insects and their predators over a rice field revealed by high-resolution Scheimpflug Lidar.

ABSTRACT: We present the results of, to our knowledge, the first Lidar study applied to continuous and simultaneous monitoring of aerial insects, bats and birds. It illustrates how common patterns of flight activity, e.g. insect swarming around twilight, depend on predation risk and other constraints acting on the faunal components. Flight activity was monitored over a rice field in China during one week in July 2016, using a high-resolution Scheimpflug Lidar system. The monitored Lidar transect was about 520 m long and covered approximately 2.5 m3. The observed biomass spectrum was bimodal, and targets were separated into insects and vertebrates in a categorization supported by visual observations. Peak flight activity occurred at dusk and dawn, with a 37 min time difference between the bat and ins

SUBMITTER: Malmqvist E 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5936944 | biostudies-literature | 2018 Apr

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature