Still from the film Nocturnes. What started as an experiment during the COVID-19 pandemic four years ago is becoming a tradition: the InScience On Tour film festival taking place in Wageningen. From tonight until Sunday, a total of ten movies featuring science as a major theme will be screened. WUR researchers are available for a Q&A following three of the films.
Entomologist Dick Belgers kicks off tonight with the film Nocturnes, which is about Indian researcher Mansi. Mansi maps hawk moths in the Himalayas. ‘A beautiful film’, he says. He should know, as he has already seen the film. ‘I attended a private screening in the theatre’, he says. ‘With my girlfriend and Dennis Jansen of the organisation. If I am to answer questions from the audience, I want to be prepared in advance.’
Hawk moths
‘Mansi studies moths at varying altitudes in the mountain range between India and China’, Belgers says. ‘Using a white sheet and light, she catches the moths and photographs them. Her study focuses on a specific species of moth, the hawk moth. She sets up her sheet every 200 metres in altitude, and enormous amounts of moths are attracted to it. She discovers that the higher the altitude, and, thus, the lower the temperatures, the bigger the moths become.’
There is no need to travel to the Himalayas to catch moths. ‘I do the same in my garden at night. You can catch all types of moths here too. Obviously, not as many as in the Himalayas, but still. Not many people know this.’ In fact, the number of moths is many times that of the number of butterflies. Belgers: ‘There are 53 species of butterflies and as many as one thousand species of moths in our country.’
Garden
That is Belgers’ message. ‘You can feel the excitement over these insects right at home in your garden. All you have to do is point a bright light at a white sheet. Or you can join the local KNNV on a trip to the Belmonte Arboretum in the summer.’
The result will not be as colourful as Mansi’s. The hawk moths she captures come in a variety of colours, ranging from red to brown and yellow. That begs the question of what the purpose is of these colours in the dark. ‘The moths fly at night, to be sure, but during the day, when it is light, they must remain hidden,’ Belgers explains. ‘Colour can be a big help.’
Q&A
That answers one of the questions that are to be expected after the film. Those wanting to know why moths increase in size at higher altitudes must ask that question themselves during the Q&A session. For example, why are moths attracted to bright lights and allow themselves to be captured? Nocturnes is a documentary by Indian directors Anirban Dutta and Anupama Srinivasan. The film is nearly one-and-a-half hours long and has English subtitles.
InScience is held in the new movie theatre Visum Mundi, in what was once WUR’s aula. Ecologist Patrick Jansen and cultural Elisabet Rasch will also host a Q&A. Jansen’s Q&A follows the screening of the film Seven Walks with Mark Brown, and Rasch’s follows the closing film Homecoming.
