Illuminating Research

Illuminating Research

Ohio Wesleyan Professor Collaborates on Eclipse, Bird Behavior Study Published in Science

DELAWARE, Ohio - Ohio Wesleyan University Professor Dustin Reichard and colleagues at Indiana University discovered some enlightening facts about bird behavior during the 2024 total solar eclipse, and they have just published their findings in the journal Science, one of the world's leading research publications.

Reichard, Ph.D., is a corresponding author on the paper, titled "Total Solar Eclipse Triggers Dawn Behavior in Birds: Insights From Acoustic Recordings and Community Science." It appears on the cover of the Oct. 9 issue of the journal, which has an estimated worldwide readership of more than 1 million and features articles that consistently rank among the most cited in the world.

Invaluable Collaboration

An OWU associate professor of Biological Sciences, Reichard said he has two primary takeaways from the ornithological research, which explored how North American birds reacted to the April 8, 2024, total solar eclipse and their disrupted light-dark cycles.

"Society takeaway: When scientists and the general public work together, we can do amazing things," said Reichard, who earned his doctorate at Indiana University and joined the Ohio Wesleyan faculty in 2015. "Without this collaborative effort, it would have been impossible to collect these data at a continental scale."

"Science takeaway: Birds are very sensitive to changes in light," Reichard said. "All it takes is a slight deviation from a normal day, like 4 minutes of darkness, to have large effects on the behavior of most species."

Significant Impact

According to the research paper, Reichard, along with senior author Kimberly Rosvall, Ph.D., and 10 of her Indiana University colleagues, found that "bird behavior was substantially affected by these few minutes of unexpected afternoon darkness. More than half of wild bird species changed their biological rhythms, with many producing a dawn chorus in the aftermath of the eclipse."

Their results were based on more than 10,000 community observations combined with artificial intelligence (AI) analyses of nearly 100,000 bird vocalizations.

"Before our study," Reichard said, "there had been very few quantitative investigations of how animals respond to a solar eclipse. Most of the published research was anecdotal (for example, I noticed this animal doing this weird thing during an eclipse) or focused on only a handful of species.

"We were able to sample the behavioral responses of birds during the eclipse at both a continental and localized scale, which had never been done before," he said. "We found that the eclipse caused substantial changes in bird movement and vocal behavior as it traveled across North America. Complementing that result, we showed that 29 of 52 species recorded in Bloomington, Indiana (home of Indiana University), exhibited a significant change in their rate of vocalization before, during, or after the eclipse."

Sound Progress

Reichard and his fellow researchers collected sound for their bioacoustic investigation using automated recording units, which he described as "essentially battery-powered microphones that can be placed in the field and left to record for days at a time." They combined these recordings with observations of bird behavior collected from the public using SolarBird, an app developed by Indiana University graduate student Liz Aguilar for the project.

After the eclipse, Reichard and Rosvall "met almost weekly for months to analyze the data and write the paper," he said, with Rosvall hiring an undergraduate student to analyze the recordings using the artificial neural network, BirdNET.

"This AI is the same algorithm integrated into the Merlin Bird ID app that many people have on their phone," Reichard said. "We had hours of recordings to analyze, and the AI could process those samples in minutes - substantially faster than a human. However, the AI is far from perfect, and we compared its bird identifications and vocalization counts to data collected by an expert human birdwatcher to ensure its accuracy."

Untapped Possibilities

Reichard said he hopes the newly published research leads to additional projects and findings.

"Our current study focused entirely on birds, but during our analysis, we noticed eclipse-induced changes in other species such as spring peepers (nocturnal frogs), beginning to call during the eclipse totality," he said. "So, this approach can certainly be broadened outside of birds, which is a wide-open area of future research. …

"We were just as interested in the species that did not respond to the eclipse as we were in those that did," Reichard explained. "What makes a species more or less sensitive to light? Are species that are less sensitive to light changes more resilient in the face of increasing light pollution around the world? These are important questions for non-eclipse-focused research in the future."

In Reichard's Lab

When he isn't studying songbirds and solar eclipses, Reichard focuses his research on the reproductive behavior of northern house wrens, which commonly nest in bird boxes across North America.

"We monitor about 150 boxes in and around Ohio Wesleyan," he said. "Most recently, we have been studying how these birds respond to predators and assess risk to themselves and their offspring. We're also interested in what makes mate switching (i.e., divorce) so common in this species."

Learn more about Reichard and Ohio Wesleyan's Department of Biological Sciences at owu.edu/BiologicalSciences.

About Science

Science has been at the center of important scientific discoveries since it was founded in 1880, with seed money from Thomas Edison. It is published by the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), the world's oldest and largest general science organization. The nonprofit AAAS serves 10 million people through primary memberships and affiliations with some 262 scientific societies and academies. Learn more at https://www.science.org.

About Ohio Wesleyan University

Founded in 1842, Ohio Wesleyan University is one of the nation's premier liberal arts universities. Located in Delaware, Ohio, the private university offers more than 70 undergraduate majors and competes in 24 NCAA Division III varsity sports. Through its signature experience, the OWU Connection, Ohio Wesleyan teaches students to understand issues from multiple academic perspectives, volunteer in service to others, build a diverse and global perspective, and translate classroom knowledge into real-world experience through internships, research, and other hands-on learning. Ohio Wesleyan is featured in the book "Colleges That Change Lives" and included on the U.S. News & World Report and Princeton Review "Best Colleges" lists. Connect with OWU expert interview sources at owu.edu/experts or learn more at owu.edu.