South of Fall Creek by the edge of the woods, the moths would gather. They were, of course, drawn by light—set out by a researcher working in Cornell University’s old Insectory building. In 1889, the lure came from a kerosene lantern, the pan underneath collecting the samples. In 1919, a researcher set up another light trap, baited by the orangish glow of an early tungsten bulb. A team of biologists used datasets both old and new to discover how flight periods of moths in Ithaca, N.Y., have changed over the past century.
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