Open ocean nocturnal insect migration in the Brazilian South Atlantic with comments on flight endurance

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1 Departamento de Botânica, Museu Nacional, Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro, Rio de Janeiro, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
2 Departamento de Entomologia, Museu Nacional, Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro, Rio de Janeiro, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
3 Departament of Zoology, Universidade Federal do Paraná, Curitiba, Paraná, Brazil
DOI
10.7287/peerj.preprints.27399v1
Published
Accepted
Subject Areas
Biogeography, Ecology, Entomology, Evolutionary Studies, Zoology
Keywords
Aeshnidae, Dispersal, Migration, Nocturnal flight, Pentatomidae, Erebidae, Dragonfly, Colonization
Copyright
© 2018 Alves et al.
Licence
This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, reproduction and adaptation in any medium and for any purpose provided that it is properly attributed. For attribution, the original author(s), title, publication source (PeerJ Preprints) and either DOI or URL of the article must be cited.
Cite this article
Alves RJV, Costa LAV, Soares A, Silva NG, Pinto ÂP. 2018. Open ocean nocturnal insect migration in the Brazilian South Atlantic with comments on flight endurance. PeerJ Preprints 6:e27399v1

Abstract

We report a nocturnal insect swarm observed aboard the oceanographic ship Cruzeiro do Sul of the Brazilian Navy, while conducting a survey of the Montague guyot (seamount), 389 km distant from the nearest land in the South Atlantic. The insects came from open sea towards the ship in all directions, attracted by powerful lighting of the deck. Except for one specimen, their provenance from another island or another ship were discarded. Most insects collided with the hull and fell into the ocean, but we managed to capture and determine seventeen (13 Hemiptera of a single species, three Lepidoptera and one Odonata). Considerations about the geographic origin and flight endurance of these insects are supported by the reconstruction of wind speed and direction provided by the crew of the ship and Hysplit modelling of air current trajectories.

Author Comment

This is a preprint submission to PeerJ Preprints.