Kim Rosvall

This is an incredibly cool way to learn about behavior

The Eclipse Turned Day to Night—And the Birds Went Quiet The “Great North American Eclipse” of April 2024 was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to study how birds and other wildlife respond to total solar eclipses

The “Great North American Eclipse” of April 2024 was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to study how birds and other wildlife respond to total solar eclipses

Community science! Input from over TEN THOUSAND PEOPLE! From Mexico to Canada! In a natural experiment!

“Bc a total solar eclipse occurs in the same location once every 3 or4 centuries, most free-living birds, like most ppl, have never seen day turn quickly to pm, only to return again mins later”🧪

Your kids were published ON THE COVER

How birds reacted to a solar eclipse, and keeping wildfire smoke out of wine On this week’s show: Citizen scientists and AI help measure how birds behaved during an eclipse, and a roundup of online news stories

Check out this podcast about the paper, which speaks to the joys of community science, teamwork, and quantitative wondering: www.science.org/content/podc...

YouTube video by Kimberly Rosvall Indiana University scientists lead project on how birds responded to the 2024 Great American Eclipse

This is a nice IU short on our eclipse project. #NSF youtube.com/shorts/PrQGn...

This post makes me so happy!!!! Thanks Chris!!

How birds reacted to a solar eclipse, and keeping wildfire smoke out of wine On this week’s show: Citizen scientists and AI help measure how birds behaved during an eclipse, and a roundup of online news stories

Learn more in this fun podcast convo with Sarah Crespi | Science | www.science.org/content/podc... (17/x)

a cartoon character with blue hair and a yellow dress is smiling and bending over . ALT: a cartoon character with blue hair and a yellow dress is smiling and bending over .

I’m so proud of Liz Aguilar, the team + the community scientists who leaned in animal behavior during the eclipse. Quoting one of them, “[This experience] was even cooler because [we] were more tuned in to the natural world.” Me too, friend! Most fulfilling project of my career so far. (16/x) #NSF

The Eclipse Turned Day to Night—And the Birds Went Quiet The “Great North American Eclipse” of April 2024 was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to study how birds and other wildlife respond to total solar eclipses

It had been (is) a brutal month (year) for basic science, making this project especially bittersweet. (15/x) #NSFfunded This article is a nice overview from @sciam.bsky.social www.scientificamerican.com/article/bird...

a group of people are standing next to each other in a hallway and one of them is wearing a tank top . ALT: a group of people are standing next to each other in a hallway and one of them is wearing a tank top .

Fast forward to March '25, finalizing the ms: Liz, Dustin, Isaac & I spent our days laughing & leaning in to the joy of discovery @juncowren.bsky.social @imillercrews.bsky.social. (14/x) #TeamworkMakesTheDreamwork

Overview of vocalizations and analytical windows surrounding totality ± 1 hour. Total vocalizations were summed across 52 species for the eclipse afternoon (green) versus equivalent times on three “control” afternoons with no eclipse, with the dotted line indicating the average and the gray ribbon indicating the minimum and maximum on afternoons with no eclipse. Species-level data are the source for our formal analyses (Fig. 4), which focused on four scoring windows: 12 min just before totality (Before; red); 4 min during totality (Totality; black), 12 min just after totality (After; orange); and 12 min slightly later when a delayed dawn chorus might be expected (Later; yellow).

I’ll never forget the moment (July 21, 2024) when we completed the 1st big validation and saw initial results. Lots of texting and ‘h*oly shit’ and ‘woah’ with co-senior author @juncowren.bsky.social at Ohio Wesleyan. At that point, we were meeting almost weekly to pull it all together. (13/x)

Probably equally cool, almost half of birds species were insensitive. Might they be the ones who are also least sensitive to urbanization and light pollution? (12/x)

a cartoon pigeon is holding a cup of hot coffee ALT: a cartoon pigeon is holding a cup of hot coffee

The results amazed us: even a four-minute “night” was enough to trigger dawn-like singing in the species that also had a dawn chorus on a normal day. The app data show that other behaviors were also affected and that the results apply way beyond Bloomington. (11/x)

All of this required a bunch of validations because it would’ve taken forever to quantify all this data with artificial intelligence. We used BirdNET, and showed it was consistent with what an expert birder recorded for a subset of recordings. BirdNET is incredible! (10/x) birdnet.cornell.edu

Green is the afternoon of the eclipse. Check out that burst around totality! The dashed lines show sunrise/sunset and morning/evening civil twilights.

Birders know that birds have a consistent onset/offset of their dawn and dusk behavior and we were able to quantify that for 52 species. Case in point: robins have a burst of song before first light each day. (9/x)

We also created a Plan B: automated recorders around Bloomington, collecting data on bird vocalizations before, during, and after totality. We used other days that week as “controls", and morning and evening data to compare eclipse behavior to behavior during normal changes in light. (8/x)

We were floored by the public participation! Close to 11,000 observations, from ~1,700 users! Mainly along path of totality. (7/x)

Solarbird: Community Bird Science for the 2024 Eclipse

Liz worked with Luddy prof @mathcancer.bsky.social &co to create SolarBird, a free app that used GPS & time stamps to match 30 sec public observations with the % obscuration of the sun, clicking boxes to say what the bird they were watching was doing ☀️ luddyeclipse2024.org/solarbird.html (6/x)

Our paper combines two big efforts. Part 1 started when Liz attended a meeting of educators wanting to lean into the eclipse and engage the public in science. Someone said “But what if its cloudy?” and Liz basically said “It’ll still be dark. Animals will know.” 5/x

Liz Aguilar: Profiles: Rosvall Lab: Indiana University Bloomington Rosvall Lab: Liz Aguilar

So, Liz Aguilar, a PhD student in my lab and #NSF fellow, led a brilliant ☀️ collaboration to seize this once-in-a-lifetime natural experiment and ask: how does a brief, midday darkness affect wild bird behavior? 4/x rosvall.lab.indiana.edu/profiles/agu...

When we realized that a total solar eclipse would peak on an April afternoon, at @iubiology.bsky.social (a hub of behavioral research), during a critical time for bird reproduction (🌸🌱), it was just too good to pass up. Everything aligned, not just the sun, moon, & earth...more puns! ☀️🌕3/x

a small bird is perched on a tree branch with the words `` good morning '' written below it . ALT: a small bird is perched on a tree branch with the words `` good morning '' written below it .

Anyone who sleeps with their windows open knows how important light is for bird behavior. But what if we shut off the sun in the middle of the day? Would birds act like it’s morning when the sun came back? (2/x)

two men are fighting with lightsabers in front of a doorway ALT: two men are fighting with lightsabers in front of a doorway

I do want to take a minute to share the backstory of our paper on the total solar eclipse that triggered dawn behavior in birds. This was SUCH a fun paper to work on, a major light in a lot of different tunnels over the past 18 months. doi.org/10.1126/scie... < ☀️ Let the light puns begin ☀️ > (1/x)

Pumped to share our work on bird behavior and the 2024 Eclipse, in today's @science.org. 100k bird vocalizations + 10k continent-wide observations from the public = really fun collab led by Liz Aguilar, with @juncowren.bsky.social @mathcancer.bsky.social @imillercrews.bsky.social #NSF

So excited to finally share our work on how birds responded to the 2024 Great American Eclipse! Thanks to @rosvall-lab.bsky.social for inviting me on this journey! I never expected any of my research to show up in @science.org, let alone on the cover. Surreal. I hope you enjoy it!

Dr. Jane Goodall filmed an interview with Netflix in March 2025 that she understood would only be released after her death.

Our group at the Allen Institute is recruiting a technician and postdoc to work on light microscopy-based connectomics. Please DM me or share with anyone you think may be interested in this NIH BRAIN CONNECTS funded project.

This tiny butterfly has the most chromosomes of any animal on Earth Scientists have confirmed that the Atlas blue butterfly carries the most chromosomes of any animal, with 229 pairs. Unlike duplication, its chromosomes split apart, reshaping its genome in surprising ...

Homie got 229 pairs of chromosomes

www.sciencedaily.com/releases/202...

From policy to practice: Progress towards #data- and #code-sharing in ecology and evolution #ProcB @asanchez-tojar.bsky.social @eivimeycook.bsky.social tell us more in our blog royalsociety.org/blog/2025/09...