novel environments to organisms. In addition, man-made materials can be mistaken for natural materials, leading some organisms to choose poor-quality habitats over better-quality habitat locations. Sensory ecology can be used to mitigate the effects of these ecological traps by clarifying which particular information organisms are using to make “bad” decisions. Organisms often misinterpret man-made surfaces such as asphalt and solar panels as natural surfaces. Solar panels, for example, reflect horizontally polarized light that is perceived by many insects to be water. Since insects lay their eggs in water, they will try to oviposit on the solar panels. This leads to widespread juvenile insect mortality on solar panels. To mitigate the effects of this ecological trap, researchers broke up the shape of the solar-active area on the panels. In doing so, the panels became less attractive to insects, thus reducing mortality. A number of bat species fall also prey to ecological traps that are the result of man-made surfaces. A recent study by Greif and Siemers found that bats determine water location based on the smoothness of a surface, not by actual presence of water. Bats thus attempt to drink from smooth surfaces that are not in fact water, such as glass. As a result, the bats waste energy and time, which could lead to decreases in fitness. Bird species are also often subject to ecological traps as a result of their sensory ecology. One of the recent areas of focus of avian sensory ecology has been on how birds may perceive large wind turbines and other buildings. Each year, countless birds die after colliding with power lines, fences, wind turbines, and buildings. The flight paths around these structures act as forms of ecological traps; while birds may perceive areas around buildings as “good habitat” and viable flight corridors, they can actually increase bird mortality because of collisions. Sensory ecologists have linked these ecological traps to avian sensory ecology. Researchers have found that while human vision is binocular, bird vision is much less so. In addition, birds do not possess high resolution frontal vision. As a result, birds may not see large structures directly in front of them, leading to collisions. A number of solutions to this problem have been proposed. One study showed that the response of birds to different airport lighting schemes differed, and that bird strikes could be reduced by altering lighting patterns. Other researchers have suggested that