Entomologist
Akito Y. Kawahara is an American and
Japanese
entomologist , scientist, and advocate of nature education, and the son of the modern conceptual artist
On Kawara .
Kawahara is a Professor and Curator at the
University of Florida and lead researcher at the
Florida Museum of Natural History 's
McGuire Center for Lepidoptera and Biodiversity .
[1] He was named Director of the McGuire Center in August 2023.
[2] He holds the position of Research Associate at the
Smithsonian Institution ,
National Museum of Natural History .
Education
Kawahara received his bachelor's degree from
Cornell University in 2002 and his Ph.D. from the
University of Maryland with Dr. Charles Mitter through the
Smithsonian Institution ,
National Museum of Natural History in 2010. He was a National Science Foundation Postdoctoral Fellow at the
University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa before starting his position at the
University of Florida .
Career
Kawahara's research interests are insect evolution, predator-prey interactions, and genetics. He has published over 175 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.
[3]
[4]
[5] He also conducts research on ultrasound production and hearing in moths and echolocation in bats, which he works on with Dr. Jesse Barber.
[6]
[7]
[8]
[9] He has also published numerous papers on the importance of insects as models for nature education, including a highly popular article on the action items that every individual can do to help global insect declines.
[10]
Awards and recognition
He has appeared in numerous films and television shows, including
Nature : "American Spring LIVE" (2019),
[11]
Nature : "Nature's Sex, Lies, and Butterflies" (2018),
[12]
David Attenborough's Conquest of the Skies 3D (2015),
[13] and
Beetle Queen Conquers Tokyo (2009).
Personal life
Kawahara was born in New York City, United States. He is the son of modern Contemporary Artist, On Kawara. As a child, he traveled between New York and Tokyo annually, attending two schools simultaneously, a schooling called "Taiheiyou-tsugaku" (Trans-Pacific Commute). He resides in Florida and New York, and has two children.
Selected publications
Barber, Jesse R.; Kawahara, Akito Y. (23 August 2013).
"Hawkmoths produce anti-bat ultrasound" . Biology Letters . 9 (4): 20130161.
doi :
10.1098/rsbl.2013.0161 .
PMC
3730625 .
PMID
23825084 .
Barber, Jesse R.; Leavell, Brian C.; Keener, Adam L.; Breinholt, Jesse W.; Chadwell, Brad A.; McClure, Christopher J. W.; Hill, Geena M.; Kawahara, Akito Y. (3 March 2015).
"Moth tails divert bat attack: Evolution of acoustic deflection" . Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences . 112 (9): 2812–2816.
Bibcode :
2015PNAS..112.2812B .
doi :
10.1073/pnas.1421926112 .
PMC
4352808 .
PMID
25730869 .
Breinholt, Jesse W.; Earl, Chandra; Lemmon, Alan R.; Lemmon, Emily Moriarty; Xiao, Lei; Kawahara, Akito Y. (1 January 2018).
"Resolving Relationships among the Megadiverse Butterflies and Moths with a Novel Pipeline for Anchored Phylogenomics" . Systematic Biology . 67 (1): 78–93.
doi :
10.1093/sysbio/syx048 .
PMID
28472519 .
S2CID
3658506 .
Espeland, Marianne; Breinholt, Jesse; Willmott, Keith R.; Warren, Andrew D.; Vila, Roger; Toussaint, Emmanuel F.A.; Maunsell, Sarah C.; Aduse-Poku, Kwaku; Talavera, Gerard; Eastwood, Rod; Jarzyna, Marta A.; Guralnick, Robert; Lohman, David J.; Pierce, Naomi E.; Kawahara, Akito Y. (March 2018).
"A Comprehensive and Dated Phylogenomic Analysis of Butterflies" . Current Biology . 28 (5): 770–778.e5.
doi :
10.1016/j.cub.2018.01.061 .
hdl :
10072/384394 .
PMID
29456146 .
S2CID
3346155 .
Kawahara, Akito Y.; Plotkin, David; Espeland, Marianne; Meusemann, Karen; Toussaint, Emmanuel F. A.; Donath, Alexander; Gimnich, France; Frandsen, Paul B.; Zwick, Andreas; Reis, Mario dos; Barber, Jesse R.; Peters, Ralph S.; Liu, Shanlin; Zhou, Xin; Mayer, Christoph; Podsiadlowski, Lars; Storer, Caroline; Yack, Jayne E.; Misof, Bernhard; Breinholt, Jesse W. (5 November 2019).
"Phylogenomics reveals the evolutionary timing and pattern of butterflies and moths" . Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences . 116 (45): 22657–22663.
Bibcode :
2019PNAS..11622657K .
doi :
10.1073/pnas.1907847116 .
PMC
6842621 .
PMID
31636187 .
Kawahara, Akito Y.; Reeves, Lawrence E.; Barber, Jesse R.; Black, Scott H. (12 January 2021).
"Opinion: Eight simple actions that individuals can take to save insects from global declines" . Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences . 118 (2): e2002547117.
Bibcode :
2021PNAS..11820025K .
doi :
10.1073/pnas.2002547117 .
PMC
7812750 .
PMID
33431563 .
Kawahara, Akito Y.; Barber, Jesse R. (19 May 2015).
"Tempo and mode of antibat ultrasound production and sonar jamming in the diverse hawkmoth radiation" . Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences . 112 (20): 6407–6412.
Bibcode :
2015PNAS..112.6407K .
doi :
10.1073/pnas.1416679112 .
PMC
4443353 .
PMID
25941377 .
Kawahara, Akito Y.; Breinholt, Jesse W. (7 August 2014).
"Phylogenomics provides strong evidence for relationships of butterflies and moths" . Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences . 281 (1788): 20140970.
doi :
10.1098/rspb.2014.0970 .
PMC
4083801 .
PMID
24966318 .
References
^
"Florida Museum Faculty Spotlight" .
^
"Akito Kawahara named director of McGuire Center for Lepidoptera and Biodiversity" .
^
"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. Archived from
the original on September 24, 2015.
^ Quenqua, Douglas (16 February 2015).
"Moth Tails Divert Bats" . The New York Times .
^ Yong, Ed (October 21, 2019).
"A Textbook Evolutionary Story About Moths and Bats Is Wrong" . The Atlantic .
^ Kawahara, Akito Y.; Reeves, Lawrence E.; Barber, Jesse R.; Black, Scott H. (12 January 2021).
"Opinion: Eight simple actions that individuals can take to save insects from global declines" . Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences . 118 (2): e2002547117.
Bibcode :
2021PNAS..11820025K .
doi :
10.1073/pnas.2002547117 .
PMC
7812750 .
PMID
33431563 . [
non-primary source needed ]
^
"PBS American Spring Live" .
PBS .
^
"Sex, Lies and Butterflies" .
PBS . 2 Mar 2018.
^
David Attenborough's Conquest of the Skies 3D at
IMDb
External links
International National Academics