When the British team exposed caterpillars to electric fields similar to those produced by flying wasps, they showed defensive behavior Such as entangling, swinging, or biting. “This basically suggests that prey and predators can use static electricity to detect each other,” England said.
Behavioral ecologist Dornhaus questioned whether electroreception would buy the larvae much time. However, the high risk of predator-prey conflict suggests that any benefit may be important. “For an individual caterpillar, even a small increase in the probability of surviving that encounter becomes an evolutionarily relevant behavior,” she said.
“Organisms are always opportunists,” said Ortega-Jiménez, who was impressed by the British study. He desperately wants more data – ideally from wild animals – to examine naturalistic behavior. “Who is winning this game? “Who is using more static electricity?” he asked. “What types of predators and prey are there?”
A cinnabar moth caterpillar takes a defensive stance. The larva’s sensory hairs can detect static fields produced by predators such as wasps.Photo courtesy of Sam J. England
As more evidence links statics and survival, the story is emerging that evolution may have fine-tuned our ability to sense or transfer electric charges, just like any other trait. “The fact that there are so many different species with different ecologies is what makes this work so interesting,” said Beth Harris, a graduate student in Robert’s lab. “A real treasure chest is opening.”
biographical inheritance
As work continued in Robert’s lab, suspicions arose that the detection and accumulation of static electricity among insects and arachnids was not accidental. Caterpillars with better electroreceptivity or nocturnal moths that carry lower charges are better able to avoid predators. If they survive and reproduce further, these genes and traits, including those that help organisms sense and use static fields, may become stronger and more common over the next generation.
It’s starting to become impossible to ignore the idea that static electricity may have a greater impact on the animal world than we know today. Entire ecosystems may depend on hidden electric fields. “I don’t think mass extinction will occur if we suddenly eliminate static electricity.” England said. “But I think you’d be surprised at how many animals have to adapt to not using it.”
Electrostatic forces act on the scale of millimeters and centimeters, but their collective impact can be much larger. For example, social bees, such as bumblebees, gather food for other colony members and larvae. Foragers make hundreds of decisions about flowers every day, and many other bees rely on those decisions as well. “What we think of as a fairly subtle difference that allows us to detect a flower a second faster at an individual level could be very evolutionarily important,” said Dornhaus, who studies how bees interact with flowers.
If static electricity aids pollination, it could also change plant evolution. “Perhaps some fundamental feature of the flower actually helps generate the right electrostatic field,” Dornhaus said. “And we’ve been ignoring a whole dimension of flower life because we can’t see it.” This idea isn’t that far-fetched. In 2021, Robert’s team observed petunias releasing more. Compounds that attract insects Around a bee-like electric field. This means they wait for pollinators to actively attract flowers nearby, Robert said.
