Key Points
In 2013, Daniel Robert, a sensory ecologist at the University of Bristol in England, broke ground in this discipline when his lab discovered that bees can detect and discriminate among electric fields radiating from flowers..
Electrostatics may turn out to be an evolutionary force in small creatures survival that helps them find food, migrate, and infest other living things.. Daniel Robert studies animal biophysics at the University of Bristol..
We know from all these brilliant experiments that electric fields do have a functional role in the ecology of these animals, said Benito Wainwright, an evolutionary ecologist at the University of St. Andrews who has studied the sensory systems of butterflies and katydids..
In a similar way, Ortega-Jimnez considered, friction from beating insect wings could shed negative charges from body to air, leaving the insects with a positive charge while creating regions of negative static..
He wanted to test whether Lepidoptera, the order of flying insects that includes butterflies and moths, build up enough static during flight to collect pollen from the flowers they visit for nectar, as bees do..
