This gap in understanding is due, mostly, to the challenge of tracking these small animals as they fly, surprisingly rapidly and often at night. A new study on migrating death’s-head hawkmoths (Acherontia atropos) has now used miniscule tracking devices and a light aircraft to track seven individual moths as they migrated across the Alps at night. It is a long-distance Afro-Palearctic migrant that arrives to breed in Europe, north of the Alps, in spring each year. This, along with the insect’s exceptional night vision, indicates that the hawkmoths likely use a combination of visual landmarks and Earth’s magnetic field to navigate considerable distances during migration. One of these pathways involved using a wide valley running west-southwest that enabled the moths to circumvent the Alps altogether.

Source: The North Africa Journal August 11, 2022 20:10 UTC