Akito Y. Kawahara

Akito Yuji Kawahara is an American and Japanese entomologist, scientist, and advocate of nature education.

Kawahara is an Associate Professor at the University of Florida and lead researcher at the Florida Museum of Natural History's McGuire Center for Lepidoptera and Biodiversity.^[1] He is also the son of the modern conceptual artist On Kawara.

Kawahara received his Bachelor's from Cornell University in 2002 and his Ph.D. with Dr. Charles Mitter through the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History in 2010. Kawahara's research interests are insect phylogenetics, predator-prey interactions, and phylogeography. He has published over 100 scientific papers, and received numerous awards, and among his largest contributions are papers on the evolution of butterflies and moths^[2][3]. He also has studies ultrasound production in moths and bats, which he works on with Dr. Jesse Barber^[4][5][6]. He has appeared in numerous films, including Nature's Sex, lies, and Butterflies (2018)^[7], David Attenborough's Conquest of the Skies (2014)^[8], and Beetle Queen Conquers Tokyo (2009)^[9].

Selected publications

• Barber JR, Kawahara AY. 2013. Hawkmoths produce anti-bat ultrasound. Biology Letters 9:20130161.
• Barber JR, Leavell BC, Keener AL, Breinholt JW, Chadwell BA, McClure CJW, Hill GM, Kawahara AY. 2015. Moth tails divert bat attack: evolution of acoustic deflection. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, USA (PNAS) 112:2812-2816.
• Breinholt JW, Earl C, Lemmon AR, Lemmon EM, Xiao L, Kawahara AY. 2018. Resolving relationships among the megadiverse butterflies and moths with a novel pipeline for Anchored Phylogenomics. Systematic Biology 67:78-93.
• Espeland M, Breinholt JW, Willmott KR, Warren AD, Vila R, Toussaint EFA, Maunsell SC, Aduse-Poku K, Talavera G, Eastwood R, Jarzyna M, Reis L, Guralnick R, Lohman DJ, Pierce NE, Kawahara AY. 2018. A comprehensive and dated phylogenomic analysis of butterflies. Current Biology 28:770-778.
• Kawahara AY, Barber JR. 2015. Tempo and mode of ultrasound and jamming in the diverse hawkmoth radiation. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, USA (PNAS) 112:6407-6412.
• Kawahara AY, Breinholt JW. 2014. Phylogenomics provides strong evidence for relationships of butterflies and moths. Proceedings of the Royal Society of London, Series B 281:20140970.
• Kawahara, A.Y., Plotkin, D., Hamilton, C., Gough, H., St. Laurent, R., Owens, R., Homziak, N.T., Barber, J.R.. 2018. Diel behavior in moths and butterflies: a synthesis of data illuminates the evolution of temporal activity. Organisms Diversity and Evolution 18(1):13-27.

References