Akito Y. Kawahara
Akito Y. Kawahara is an American and Japanese entomologist, scientist, and advocate of nature education.
Akito Y. Kawahara | |
---|---|
Born | New York, NY, US |
Nationality | American, Japanese |
Education | Cornell University (B.S.) 2002; University of Maryland (M.S. and Ph.D.) 2010, all in Entomology |
Alma mater | Cornell University |
Known for | Entomology, evolution |
Scientific career | |
Fields | Entomology, behavior, evolution |
Institutions | University of Florida |
Website | https://www.floridamuseum.ufl.edu/mcguire/kawahara/akito-kawahara/ |
Kawahara is an associate professor at the University of Florida and lead researcher at the Florida Museum of Natural History's McGuire Center for Lepidoptera and Biodiversity[1] and a research associate at the Smithsonian Institution, National Museum of Natural History. He is also the son of the modern conceptual artist On Kawara.
Kawahara received his bachelor's degree from Cornell University in 2002 and his Ph.D. with Dr. Charles Mitter through the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History in 2010. Kawahara's research interests are insect evolution, predator-prey interactions, and genetics. He has published over 100 peer-reviewed scientific papers, and has received many national and international awards. Among his largest contributions are papers on the evolution of butterflies and moths.[2][3][4] He also conducts research on ultrasound production and hearing in moths and echolocation in bats, which he works on with Dr. Jesse Barber.[5][6][7][8]
He has appeared in numerous films and television shows, including PBS American Spring Live (2019),[9],Nature's Sex, Lies, and Butterflies(2018),[10] David Attenborough's Conquest of the Skies (2014),[11] and Beetle Queen Conquers Tokyo (2009).
Selected publications
- Barber JR, Kawahara AY. 2013. Hawkmoths produce anti-bat ultrasound. Biology Letters 9:20130161.
- Barber JR, Leavell BC, Keener AL, Breinholt JW, Chadwell BA, McClure CJW, Hill GM, Kawahara AY. 2015. Moth tails divert bat attack: evolution of acoustic deflection. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, USA (PNAS) 112:2812-2816.
- Breinholt JW, Earl C, Lemmon AR, Lemmon EM, Xiao L, Kawahara AY. 2018. Resolving relationships among the megadiverse butterflies and moths with a novel pipeline for Anchored Phylogenomics. Systematic Biology 67:78-93.
- Espeland M, Breinholt JW, Willmott KR, Warren AD, Vila R, Toussaint EFA, Maunsell SC, Aduse-Poku K, Talavera G, Eastwood R, Jarzyna M, Reis L, Guralnick R, Lohman DJ, Pierce NE, Kawahara AY. 2018. A comprehensive and dated phylogenomic analysis of butterflies. Current Biology 28:770-778.
- Kawahara AY, Plotkin D, Espeland M, Meusemann K, Toussaint EFA, Donath A, Gimnich F, Frandsen PB, Zwick A, dos Reis M, Barber JR, Peters RS, Liu S, Zhou X, Mayer C, Podsiadlowski L, Storer C, Misof B, Breinholt JW. 2019. Phylogenomics reveals the evolutionary timing and pattern of butterflies and moths. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, USA (PNAS) https://www.pnas.org/content/early/2019/10/15/1907847116.
- Kawahara AY, Barber JR. 2015. Tempo and mode of ultrasound and jamming in the diverse hawkmoth radiation. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, USA (PNAS) 112:6407-6412.
- Kawahara AY, Breinholt JW. 2014. Phylogenomics provides strong evidence for relationships of butterflies and moths. Proceedings of the Royal Society of London, Series B 281:20140970.
References
- "Florida Museum Faculty Spotlight".
- "Butterflies and plants evolved in sync, but moth 'ears' predated bats". 21 October 2019.
- Wade, Nicholas (21 October 2019). "How the Butterfly Discovered Daylight". The New York Times.
- "Scientists Trace Butterfly and Moth Evolutionary History". 1 August 2014.
- "The Evolution of Hawkmoths' Sonar Jamming". 13 May 2015.
- "Moths Vibrate Genitals to Scare Bats". 8 July 2013.
- Quenqua, Douglas (16 February 2015). "Moth Tails Divert Bats". The New York Times.
- Yong, Ed (21 October 2019). "A Textbook Evolutionary Story About Moths and Bats Is Wrong". The Atlantic.
- "PBS American Spring Live".
- "Sex, Lies and Butterflies". 2 March 2018.
- "David Attenborough's Conquest of the Skies".