Finding the way in the dark: The sensory basis for navigation in nocturnal animals

Animals are spectacular navigators.

Some expertly navigate over shorter distances between a nest and a foraging site, learning and memorising landmarks along the route to guide their journeys.

Others – including birds, sea turtles and insects – navigate over much greater distances, performing spectacular migrations across the Earth.

These navigational feats, whether shorter or longer, require external compass cues like the sun and the Earth’s magnetic field, and a robust sensory system to detect themEven though we understand much about the navigation of day-active animals that easily see brightly lit landmarks and use the sun as a highly salient and reliable global compass cue, we know little about how the large variety of nocturnal navigators cope in a dark world where landmarks are extremely difficult to see and the moon provides a variable and unreliable compass.

In this project we will investigate two model nocturnal navigators – a Panamanian rainforest bee, a short-range navigator, and the Australian migratory Bogong moth, a long-range navigator.

Using a combination of behavioural and electrophysiological experiments and image analysis, we will investigate how landmarks and global compass cues such as the Earth’s magnetic field and the stars are used by these insects to navigate at night.

Following our recent discovery of a magnetic sense in the Bogong moth, we also aim to locate and characterise the elusive magnetosensor, the last great mystery of sensory physiology.