DOI: 10.5061/dryad.qp6pt2p
title: Data from: Aeroecology of a solar eclipse

description: Light cues elicit strong responses from nearly all forms of life, perhaps
 most notably as circadian rhythms entrained by periods of daylight and
 darkness. Atypical periods of darkness, like solar eclipses, provide rare
 opportunities to study biological responses to light cues. By using a
 continental scale radar network, we investigated responses of flying
 animals to the total solar eclipse of 21 August 2017. We quantified the
 number of biological targets in the atmosphere at 143 weather radar
 stations across the continental United States to investigate whether the
 decrease in light and temperature at an atypical time would initiate a
 response like that observed at sunset, when activity in the atmosphere
 usually increases. Overall, biological activity decreased in the period
 leading to totality, followed by a short low-altitude spike of biological
 activity during totality in some radars. This pattern suggests that cues
 associated with the eclipse were insufficient to initiate nocturnal
 activity comparable to that occurring at sunset but sufficient to suppress
 diurnal activity.
description: VIR during the
 2017-08-21 EclipseBiological data from 143
 NEXRAD stations, process and extracted in R-package bioRad, showing
 biological activity in the air surrounding the American Eclipse on
 2017-08-21. This file contains the four hours surrounding the time of max
 eclipse at each site on day of eclipse. Included is NEXRAD site name
 (site), vertically integrated reflectivity (vir) for each timestamp in UTC
 (datetime), the time from that timestamp to eclipse in minutes (diff), the
 maximum amount of obscuration at that site (obscuration) and two
 obscuration groupings (obs_groups = &lt;80%, 80-95%, 95-99.9%, 100%,
 obs_groups2 = &lt;80%, 80-95%, 95-100%).eclipse_VIR.csvVIR at sunset 2017-08-21Biological data from 143 NEXRAD stations, process and extracted in R-package bioRad, showing biological activity in the air surrounding sunset on the day of the American Eclipse 2017-08-21. Contains the NEXRAD site name (site), vertically integrated reflectivity (vir) for each timestamp in UTC (datetime), time of sunset in UTC (sunset), the time from that timestamp to sunset in minutes (diff), the maximum amount of obscuration at that site (obscuration) and two obscuration groupings (obs_groups = &lt;80%, 80-95%, 95-99.9%, 100%, obs_groups2 = &lt;80%, 80-95%, 95-100%).eclipse_VIR_sunset.csvVIR on days surrounding the 2017-08-21 eclipseBiological data from 143 NEXRAD stations, process and extracted in R-package bioRad, showing biological activity in the air in the four hours surrounding the time of day of the eclipse on the two previous and two following days (2017-08-19 to 2017-08-23). Contains the NEXRAD site name (site), vertically integrated reflectivity (vir) for each timestamp in UTC (datetime), the time from that timestamp to the time of day of the eclipse in minutes (diff), the maximum amount of obscuration during the eclipse at that site (obscuration) and two obscuration groupings (obs_groups = &lt;80%, 80-95%, 95-99.9%, 100%, obs_groups2 = &lt;80%, 80-95%, 95-100%).eclipse_VIR_4days.csv