MCA Pilot PUI: Macroecological rules for the distribution of reflectivity of near-infrared radiation in birds and insects

This project supports the development of a new line of research in an existing research laboratory at California State University Dominguez Hills. This activity will include training activities with experts in multispectral reflectivity at the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County and the University of Melbourne. This new research agenda is targeted towards making discoveries about the ecology and evolution of near-infrared reflectivity in animals, which is an important part of understanding how animals regulate their temperature when they are directly exposed to heat from the sun.

Some animals are more reflective than others in the near-infrared range of the electromagnetic spectrum that bears the majority of the heat coming from the sun. This project will develop and understanding of how this reflectivity varies in different kinds of organisms and the environments where they live. This is expected to produce a more detailed understanding of how biodiversity functions and responds to rapidly changing environmental conditions.

Moreover, there engineering of manufactured surfaces that demonstrate high near-infrared reflectivity can be of great benefit to society in terms of climate resilience and economic growth, and by learning how nature has evolved many different structural ways to reflect near-infrared radiation may provide bioinspired design to support the development of more heat-reflecting surfaces for clothing, dwellings, and other surfaces.

The majority of thermal radiation that organisms are exposed to from the sun arrives in the form of near-infrared (NIR) radiation. The ability to reflect this heat is a critical thermal adaptation of animals, which demonstrate remarkable variability in NIR reflectivity. The taxonomic and geographic distribution of NIR reflectivity is not documented for nearly any organisms, and discovering biological and environmental predictors of NIR reflectivity is likely to result in novel insights into thermal resilience by animals and the ecological and evolutionary responses to climate change.

This investigation will support the development of novel macroecological rules relating to the taxonomic and geographical distributions of near-infrared reflectivity across many bird and insect taxa. This approach to studying NIR reflectivity is ripe with potential for bioinspired design. As it is anticipated that this line of research will indicate organisms which are particularly effective at reflecting a high proportion of heat-bearing NIR radiation, modeling of the physical properties of these surfaces may inform efforts to produce human-manufactured surfaces with enhanced NIR reflectivity at scale.

This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.