USING LASERS TO DETECT MOTH MIGRATIONS

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Much like migratory birds, moths also have migratory patterns. These moths, and many other flying insects, eventually become major crop pests for North Carolina farmers.

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In order to study moth migration patterns, researchers at NC State University in Raleigh outfitted a drone with a container filled with moths.

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The piece of radar-like equipment is called a ceilometer, a device often used in the airline industry to measure cloud height with lasers.

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The ceilometer works by sending a laser beam into the sky, which gets reflected back by the base of a cloud and everything else it encounters along the way, from dust and rain to bugs and airplanes.

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To test whether the ceilometer can detect insects, researchers first tried dropping live moths from a drone. However, the moths failed to hit their target—the ceilometer only worked if the objects in question pass through its narrow beam.

 

In the second attempt, researchers dropped confetti from a drone instead. The ceilometer successfully detected the confetti, which proved that it could detect something as small as a migrating moth – if it passes through a beam roughly four inches wide.

 

When the insects start emerging again, Researchers hope there will be something about the character of the signal itself that distinguishes a bug from other particles in the air the laser beam might encounter. If migrating bugs do give off a unique signal, the researchers may be able to leverage machine learning to train the ceilometer to automatically identify those signals and perhaps discern one insect species from another.

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The ceilometers installed at the Tidewater Research Station are being used to detect moths and measure weather patterns.