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The Conversation
The Conversation
Eric Warrant, Professor of Zoology at the University of Lund, Visiting Fellow at the Australian National University, and Adjunct Professor, University of South Australia

Migrating bogong moths use the stars and Earth’s magnetic field to find ancestral summer caves each year

Vik Dunis/iNaturalist, CC BY-NC

It’s a warm January summer afternoon, and as I traverse the flower-strewn western slopes of Australia’s highest mountain, Mount Kosciuszko, I am on the lookout for a tell-tale river of boulders that winds its way down into the alpine valleys below.

Here, hidden in cave-like hollows and crevices formed deep within the river of boulders, is one of the most spectacular natural phenomena in the insect world – the summer mass gathering of an iconic Australian insect, the bogong moth (Agrotis infusa).

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