Hens blush when they are scared or excited

Domestic chickens use flushed skin and feather fluffing to display different emotions, levels of excitement

PLOS

 

IMAGE: 

DOMESTIC CHICKENS WERE ANALYZED IN DIFFERENT SCENARIOS WHICH EVOKED VARIED EMOTIONS AND FOUND TO DISPLAY FACIAL REDNESS (BLUSHING) AND FACIAL FEATHER FLUFFING. HAPPY, RELAXED BIRDS SHOWED PREENING BEHAVIORS AND FACIAL FEATHER FLUFFING. HAPPY, EXCITED BIRDS DISPLAYED SLIGHT BLUSHING, WHILE IN FEARFULLY EXCITED BIRDS, STRONG FACIAL BLUSHING WAS OBSERVED.

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CREDIT: DIEGO PEREZ-LOPEZ, PLOS, CC-BY 4.0 (HTTPS://CREATIVECOMMONS.ORG/LICENSES/BY/4.0/)

Hens fluff their head feathers and blush to express different emotions and levels of excitement, according to a study publishing July 24, 2024, in the open-access journal PLOS ONE by Cécile Arnould and colleagues from INRAE and CNRS, France.

Facial expressions are an important part of human communication that allow us to convey our emotions. Scientists have found similar signals of emotion in other mammals such as dogs, pigs and mice. Although birds can produce facial expressions by moving their head feathers and flushing their skin, it is unclear whether they express emotions in this way. To investigate, researchers filmed 18 female domestic chickens (Gallus gallus domesticus) from two breeds, as they performed routine behaviors on a French farm. They also filmed the birds while being captured and held by a human, and while being rewarded with an appealing food.

The researchers analyzed the position of their facial feathers and the color of the exposed skin on their faces in seven contexts that differed in their emotional valence and level of excitement. For example, birds preen their feathers when they are relaxed and content, whereas receiving a rewarding food generally causes excitement and happiness, and being captured is an exciting but fearful experience.

The results suggested that the position of the head feathers and the color of the skin varied between contexts. Fluffed head feathers were mainly associated with a state of contentment, whereas blushing indicated that the birds were positively excited or fearful. Hens tended to have redder skin in contexts associated with excitement, and in those that caused negative emotions. In situations that caused both excitement and a positive emotion, the birds displayed an intermediate skin redness, indicating a continuum of blushing that can convey subtle emotional changes.

The study was the first to investigate facial displays of emotion in chickens, and suggests that domestic hens use facial expressions to show their emotions, much like humans and other mammals do. These findings offer a window into the emotional experiences of domestic birds, which could be used to improve the welfare of farmed poultry, the authors say.

The authors add: “The skin blushing on the face of the domestic fowl is a window into their emotions. The intensity of the blushing varies within a few seconds depending on the emotional situations they experience.”

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In your coverage please use this URL to provide access to the freely available article in PLOS ONE: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0306601

Citation: Arnould C, Love SA, Piégu B, Lefort G, Blache M-C, Parias C, et al. (2024) Facial blushing and feather fluffing are indicators of emotions in domestic fowl (Gallus gallus domesticus). PLoS ONE 19(7): e0306601. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0306601

Author Countries: France

Funding: This work was supported by INRAE: UMR PRC (CA, SAL, FL, RN, LL, AB) and Métaprogramme SANBA - RED project (CA, SAL, MCB, FL, RN, LL, AB). DS thesis is supported by INRAE and Région Centre Val de Loire. The funders have no role in the data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.

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JOURNAL

PLoS ONE

DOI

10.1371/journal.pone.0306601 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Experimental study

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

Animals

ARTICLE TITLE

Facial blushing and feather fluffing are indicators of emotions in domestic fowl (Gallus gallus domesticus)

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

24-Jul-2024

 

Weibo posts illuminate public response to China’s three-child policy measures

Measures such as housing subsidies are praised, but extended maternity leave elicits concern

Peer-Reviewed Publication

PLOS

 

IMAGE: 

RESEARCH FRAMEWORK.

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CREDIT: PENG ET AL., 2024, PLOS ONE, CC-BY 4.0 (HTTPS://CREATIVECOMMONS.ORG/LICENSES/BY/4.0/)

An analysis of comments on Chinese social media platform Sina Weibo reveals trends in the public response to measures implemented to support China’s three-child policy, highlighting concerns about women’s rights and employment. Lijuan Peng of Zhejiang Gongshang University in Hangzhou, China, and colleagues present these findings in the open-access journal PLOS ONE on July 24, 2024.

For decades, China’s one-child policy restricted most families to having just one child. In 2021, to combat a falling birthrate, China introduced its three-child policy, allowing couples to have up to three children. To help encourage childbirth, China has introduced supportive measures alongside, such as housing subsidies and maternity insurance.

Social media offers a unique window into the public response to new national policies, but few studies have analyzed the three-child policy through such a lens. To deepen understanding of the response to China’s three-child supportive measures, Peng and colleagues analyzed comments posted on Sina Weibo after the release of information about such measures between May 2021 and June 2022. They drew on various statistical and computational tools, including neural network analysis, to identify hot topics and areas of concern.

The analysis revealed short-term, positive attitudes among Weibo users in response to some supportive measures, including those relating to housing subsidies, maternity insurance, and financial incentives. However, users showed persistent negative responses to extensions of maternity leave, primarily due to concerns about women’s future employment opportunities and marital rights.

The researchers found that Sina Weibo discussions about the three-child policy were primarily centered around protection of women’s rights, including post-childbirth legal rights and access to adequate physical and mental healthcare. Other hot topics included the financial difficulty of raising multiple children and concerns about housing and childcare services. The study also highlighted a strong desire for children among many infertile or single women that has gone unfulfilled because of the limitations of the personal medical insurance system.

These findings could help inform China’s future efforts to raise birthrates. Meanwhile, further research could address some of the limitations of this analysis, such as by accounting for social media users’ demographics.

The authors add: “This study reveals the public’s evolving focus, cognition, and emotional response to the three-child supportive policy through Weibo analysis, providing insights for future policy releases.”

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In your coverage please use this URL to provide access to the freely available article in PLOS ONE: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0306698

Citation: Peng L, Chen T, Yang J, Cong G (2024) Changes in online public opinions associated with various three-child supportive policies in China: Observational study using social media data over time. PLoS ONE 19(7): e0306698. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0306698

Author Countries: China, USA

Funding: This research is supported by Zhejiang Provincial Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. LY22G010004), as well as Zhejiang Gongshang University “digital +” discipline construction key project (Grant No. SZJ2022B019). In addition, the funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.

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JOURNAL

PLoS ONE

DOI

10.1371/journal.pone.0306698 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Observational study

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

People

ARTICLE TITLE

Changes in online public opinions associated with various three-child supportive policies in China: Observational study using social media data over time

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

24-Jul-2024

COI STATEMENT

NO authors have competing interests

 

Southern Ocean absorbing more CO2 than previously thought, study finds

UNIVERSITY OF EAST ANGLIA

 

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THE FLUX SYSTEM THAT COLLECTED DATA FOR THE STUDY IS NOW BEING USED ON NEW RESEARCH SHIP THE RRS SIR DAVID ATTENBOROUGH (PICTURED).

A CO2 FLUX SYSTEM ON THE RRS SIR DAVID ATTENBOROUGH DURING A RESEARCH CRUISE IN ANTARCTICA IN 2024.

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CREDIT: TOM BELL/PML

New research led by the University of East Anglia (UEA) and Plymouth Marine Laboratory (PML) has found that the Southern Ocean absorbs more carbon dioxide (CO2) than previously thought.

Using direct measurements of CO2 exchange, or fluxes, between the air and sea, the scientists found the ocean around Antarctica absorbs 25% more CO2 than previous indirect estimates based on shipboard data have suggested.

The Southern Ocean plays a major role in absorbing CO2 emitted by human activities, a process vital for controlling the Earth's climate. However, there are big uncertainties in the magnitude and variability in this flux.

Until now it has been estimated using shipboard measurements, such as those collected for the Surface Ocean CO2 Atlas (SOCAT) from research ships and sail drones, data from profiling floats deployed in the ocean, and global ocean biogeochemistry models. These different approaches have produced large variations in estimates.

This new study used a novel technique called eddy covariance - with flux systems mounted on ships’ foremasts - to directly measure air-sea CO2 fluxes during seven research cruises in the region.

The results - published in the journal Science Advances - show the summer Southern Ocean is likely to be a strong CO2 sink, challenging the much weaker estimates based on float data and model simulations, which the authors say “substantially underestimate” the observed CO2 uptake.

The authors argue this difference can be explained by considering temperature variations in the upper ocean and a limited resolution, for example averaging over a too-long time scale or sampling over a too-large interval, adding that current models and float data do not account for small, intense CO2 uptake events.

Lead author Dr Yuanxu Dong, of UEA’s Centre for Ocean and Atmospheric Sciences (COAS) and PML, is currently at the GEOMAR Helmholtz Centre for Ocean Research Kiel, funded by a Humboldt Foundation fellowship. He said: “This is the first time a large number of direct air-sea CO2 flux observations have been used to assess existing flux products in the Southern Ocean. Our findings provide direct observational evidence that this ocean may take up more CO2 than previously recognized.

“Accurate quantification of the Southern Ocean CO2 sink is essential for the assessment of the Earth’s climate. However, it is the most uncertain region regarding the estimate of its CO2 sink capacity.

“Our study reduces this uncertainty and improves the understanding of Southern Ocean CO2 uptake, and we recommend that future estimates should include temperature adjustments and higher resolution reconstruction and modelling.”

The team, which also included scientists at the Alfred Wegener and Max Planck Institutes in Germany, the Flanders Marine Institute in Belgium and University of Hawai'i in the US, investigated inconsistencies in the existing CO2 flux estimates, then used the eddy covariance flux observations to assess the different data sets. 

The cruise data covered approximately 3300 hours - about 175 days - of measurements in the Antarctic summer of 2019 and 2020, defined as November to April in the study, over an area of highly dynamic frontal zones. Measurements were taken hourly compared, for example, to approximately every 10 days for those from floats.

Dr Mingxi Yang, study co-author and Chemical Oceanographer at PML, said: “The Southern Ocean is a key sink of CO2, but the magnitudes and the locations of this ocean uptake are uncertain. PML's autonomous and high frequency eddy covariance system has significantly increased the number of direct air-sea CO2 flux measurements in this region.

“This paper offers the first comparison between direct CO2 flux measurements and estimates from coarse data products and global models on a large spatial/temporal scale. It has helped validate these and shed light on ways to improve them.”

Lack of winter data is a general problem with ships because of the difficulty accessing the region at that time, which the floats partially address. Acknowledging that their cruise data only covers some parts of the Southern Ocean in summer, the authors say continued efforts towards high-quality observations are essential to improve estimates of air-sea CO2 fluxes.

This might include an expansion of measurements to more ships, and the further deployment of buoys and sail drones, particularly in the winter season. Additional observations in winter by unattended platforms could also help fill the seasonal data gap.

Prof Tom Bell, co-author and PML Ocean-Atmosphere Biogeochemist, added: “We have recently moved our flux system onto the new ice breaker, the RRS Sir David Attenborough, and collected the first set of flux measurements during a research cruise in the Weddell Sea earlier this year. We aim to continue this valuable work over the coming years, which is essential for monitoring the current climate and forecasting future changes.”

The researchers also warn that the amount of shipboard surface ocean CO2 measurements has drastically declined in recent years, partly due to the COVID pandemic, but also to less funding. The number of annual datasets in SOCAT, for example, decreased by 35% from 2017 to 2021 – and 40% for the Southern Ocean.

Dr Dorothee Bakker, of UEA’s COAS and chair of SOCAT, said: “There is a real need for sustained and expanded funding of surface ocean CO2 measurements and their SOCAT synthesis, in order to constrain Southern Ocean CO2 uptake, to support the World Meteorological Organization’s Global Greenhouse Gas Watch monitoring initiative and to inform climate policy.”

The work was supported by funding from the China Scholarship Council, the UK’s Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) and the European Space Agency.

‘Direct observational evidence of strong CO2 uptake in the Southern Ocean’, Yuanxu Dong, Dorothee C E Bakker, Thomas G Bell, Mingxi Yang, Peter Landschützer, Judith Hauck, Christian Rödenbeck, Vassilis Kitidis, Seth M Bushinsky, and Peter Liss, is published in Science Advances on July 24.

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JOURNAL

Science Advances

DOI

10.1126/sciadv.adn5781 

ARTICLE TITLE

Direct observational evidence of strong CO2 uptake in the Southern Ocean

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

24-Jul-2024

 

Saharan dust regulates hurricane rainfall

STANFORD UNIVERSITY

Giant plumes of Sahara Desert dust that gust across the Atlantic can suppress hurricane formation over the ocean and affect weather in North America. 

But thick dust plumes can also lead to heavier rainfall – and potentially more destruction – from landfalling storms, according to a July 24 study in Science Advances. The research shows a previously unknown relationship between hurricane rainfall and Saharan dust plumes. 

“Surprisingly, the leading factor controlling hurricane precipitation is not, as traditionally thought, sea surface temperature or humidity in the atmosphere. Instead, it’s Sahara dust,” said the corresponding author Yuan Wang, an assistant professor of Earth system science at the Stanford Doerr School of Sustainability.

Previous studies have found that Saharan dust transport may decline dramatically in the coming decades and hurricane rainfall will likely increase due to human-caused climate change. 

However, uncertainty remains around the questions of how climate change will affect outflows of dust from the Sahara and how much more rainfall we should expect from future hurricanes. Additional questions surround the complex relationships among Saharan dust, ocean temperatures, and hurricane formation, intensity, and precipitation. Filling in the gaps will be critical to anticipating and mitigating the impacts of climate change.

“Hurricanes are among the most destructive weather phenomena on Earth,” said Wang. Even relatively weak hurricanes can produce heavy rains and flooding hundreds of miles inland. “For conventional weather predictions, especially hurricane predictions, I don’t think dust has received sufficient attention to this point.”

Competing effects

Dust can have competing effects on tropical cyclones, which are classified as hurricanes in the North Atlantic, central North Pacific, and eastern North Pacific when maximum sustained wind speeds reach 74 miles per hour or higher.

“A dust particle can make ice clouds form more efficiently in the core of the hurricane, which can produce more precipitation,” Wang explained, referring to this effect as microphysical enhancement. Dust can also block solar radiation and cool sea surface temperatures around a storm’s core, which weakens the tropical cyclone.

Wang and colleagues set out to first develop a machine learning model capable of predicting hurricane rainfall, and then identify the underlying mathematical and physical relationships.

The researchers used 19 years of meteorological data and hourly satellite precipitation observations to predict rainfall from individual hurricanes. 

The results show a key predictor of rainfall is dust optical depth, a measure of how much light filters through a dusty plume. They revealed a boomerang-shaped relationship in which rainfall increases with dust optical depths between 0.03 and 0.06, and sharply decreases thereafter. In other words, at high concentrations, dust shifts from boosting to suppressing rainfall.  

“Normally, when dust loading is low, the microphysical enhancement effect is more pronounced. If dust loading is high, it can more efficiently shield [the ocean] surface from sunlight, and what we call the ‘radiative suppression effect’ will be dominant,” Wang said.

Additional authors are affiliated with Western Michigan University, Purdue University, University of Utah, and California Institute of Technology

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JOURNAL

Science Advances

DOI

10.1126/sciadv.adn6106 

ARTICLE TITLE

Leading Role of Saharan Dust on Tropical Cyclone Rainfall in the Atlantic Basin

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

24-Jul-2024

THE CREATION OF MICROPLASTICS

Researchers discover faster, more energy-efficient way to manufacture an industrially important chemical

Zirconium combined with silicon nitride enhances the conversion of propane — present in natural gas — needed to create in-demand plastic, polypropylene

Peer-Reviewed Publication

DOE/ARGONNE NATIONAL LABORATORY

 

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ZIRCONIUM (LARGER BURNT ORANGE ATOM), COMBINED WITH SILICON NITRIDE (BLUE AND GRAY ATOMS), ENHANCES THE TRANSFORMATION OF PROPANE INTO PROPYLENE IN A WAY THAT'S FASTER AND USES LESS ENERGY THAN MORE TRADITIONAL MEANS.

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CREDIT: (IMAGE BY DAVID KAPHAN, MAX DELFERRO AND YU LIM KIM/ARGONNE NATIONAL LABORATORY.)

Polypropylene is a common type of plastic found in many essential products used today, such as food containers and medical devices. Because polypropylene is so popular, demand is surging for a chemical used to make it. That chemical, propylene, can be produced from propane. Propane is a natural gas commonly used in barbeque grills.

Scientists from the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Argonne National Laboratory and Ames National Laboratory report a faster, more energy-efficient way to manufacture propylene than the process currently used.

Converting propane into propylene typically involves a metal catalyst like chromium or platinum on a support material, such as aluminum oxide or silicon dioxide. The catalyst speeds up the reaction. However, it also necessitates high operating temperatures and energy use.

“One person cannot do everything. This is really a team effort, and everyone brought their expertise to the table to achieve this goal.” — Max Delferro, Argonne chemist

In a collaborative project, scientists from Argonne and Ames found that zirconium combined with silicon nitride enhances the catalytic conversion of propane gas to propylene. It does so in a way that is faster-reacting and less toxic and uses less energy than other nonprecious metals, like chromium. It is also less expensive than precious metal catalysts like platinum.

This discovery also reveals a way to reduce the temperature of the catalytic process. In turn, this reduces the amount of carbon dioxide released. Carbon dioxide accounts for almost 80% of greenhouse gas emissions in the United States.

Additionally, this research gives a glimpse into the reactivity achievable with other low-cost metals in the catalytic conversion of propane into propylene.

For some time, Argonne chemists David Kaphan and Max Delferro have been systematically studying how nontraditional surfaces influence and promote catalysis.

As lead researchers on this study, they wanted to understand how a nontraditional metal catalyst on a nontraditional type of support compares with traditionally used materials during the catalytic conversion of propane.

Catalyst support materials typically have high surface areas and help to distribute catalysts. They can also play an important role in promoting catalysis, as shown in this study.

The research team found that a zirconium catalyst on a silicon nitride support yielded significantly more active catalysis for the conversion of propane into propylene. Conversely, this was not the case with the silica support.

They also found that the silicon nitride support enabled catalysis in a way that’s faster and more energy efficient than with traditional metals on silica. As a catalyst support, silicon nitride can enhance chemical reactions on the surface of metals relative to more traditionally used oxides.

The scientists achieved catalytic conversion of propane at a temperature of 842 degrees F. This is slightly lower than the 1,022 degrees F typically required for catalysis using traditional materials.

Furthermore, when run at the same temperature as traditional catalysts for this transformation, the reaction rates were significantly faster than similar materials with oxide supports.

This discovery also offers proof that this concept can be generalized for other important reactions.

“This provides a window into nitride-supported metal reactivity. We see promise with the use of other transition metals where we can leverage this difference in the local environment of the nitride surface to enhance catalysis,” Kaphan said.

This research benefited from Argonne’s Advanced Photon Source (APS), a DOE Office of Science user facility. At beamline 10-BM, researchers used X-ray absorption spectroscopy to understand how the zirconium catalyst interaction with the nitride material differs from the oxide material.

Argonne researchers also collaborated with Frédéric Perras, a scientist at Ames National Laboratory, to gain a better understanding of the structure of the zirconium/silicon nitride catalyst. He used a dynamic nuclear polarization-enhanced nuclear magnetic resonance technique to analyze how silicon nitride reacts with metal sites.

“The composition on the surface of silicon nitride is largely unknown, which is what I found most exciting about this work,” said Perras, who is also an adjunct associate professor at Iowa State University.

The combination of material characterization techniques available at Argonne and Ames and the expertise of the people who worked on this paper is what contributed to the success of this experiment, according to Delferro.

“One person cannot do everything. This is really a team effort, and everyone brought their expertise to the table to achieve this goal,” he said.

A paper on the study was published in the Journal of the American Chemical Society. In addition to Delferro, Kaphan and Perras, authors include Joshua DeMuth, Yu Lim Kim, Jacklyn Hall, Zoha Syed, Kaixi Deng, Magali Ferrandon, A. Jeremy Kropf and Liu Cong.

Support for the research came from DOE’s Office of Basic Energy Sciences, Division of Chemical Sciences, Geosciences and Biosciences, Catalysis Science program.

About the Advanced Photon Source

The U. S. Department of Energy Office of Science’s Advanced Photon Source (APS) at Argonne National Laboratory is one of the world’s most productive X-ray light source facilities. The APS provides high-brightness X-ray beams to a diverse community of researchers in materials science, chemistry, condensed matter physics, the life and environmental sciences, and applied research. These X-rays are ideally suited for explorations of materials and biological structures; elemental distribution; chemical, magnetic, electronic states; and a wide range of technologically important engineering systems from batteries to fuel injector sprays, all of which are the foundations of our nation’s economic, technological, and physical well-being. Each year, more than 5,000 researchers use the APS to produce over 2,000 publications detailing impactful discoveries, and solve more vital biological protein structures than users of any other X-ray light source research facility. APS scientists and engineers innovate technology that is at the heart of advancing accelerator and light-source operations. This includes the insertion devices that produce extreme-brightness X-rays prized by researchers, lenses that focus the X-rays down to a few nanometers, instrumentation that maximizes the way the X-rays interact with samples being studied, and software that gathers and manages the massive quantity of data resulting from discovery research at the APS.

This research used resources of the Advanced Photon Source, a U.S. DOE Office of Science User Facility operated for the DOE Office of Science by Argonne National Laboratory under Contract No. DE-AC02-06CH11357.

Argonne National Laboratory seeks solutions to pressing national problems in science and technology by conducting leading-edge basic and applied research in virtually every scientific discipline. Argonne is managed by UChicago Argonne, LLC for the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Science.

The U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Science is the single largest supporter of basic research in the physical sciences in the United States and is working to address some of the most pressing challenges of our time. For more information, visit https://​ener​gy​.gov/​s​c​ience.

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JOURNAL

Journal of the American Chemical Society

DOI

10.1021/jacs.4c02776 

ARTICLE TITLE

Silicon Nitride Surface Enabled Propane Dehydrogenation Catalyzed by Supported Organozirconium

 

Butterflies accumulate enough static electricity to attract pollen without contact, new research finds

UNIVERSITY OF BRISTOL

 

IMAGE: 

HAWKMOTH

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CREDIT: SAM ENGLAND

Butterflies and moths collect so much static electricity whilst in flight, that pollen grains from flowers can be pulled by static electricity across air gaps of several millimetres or centimetres.

The finding, published today in the Journal of the Royal Society Interface, suggests that this likely increases their efficiency and effectiveness as pollinators.

The University of Bristol team also observed that the amount of static electricity carried by butterflies and moths varies between different species, and that these variations correlate with differences in their ecology, such as whether they visit flowers, are from a tropical environment, or fly during the day or night. This is the first evidence to suggest that the amount of static electricity an animal accumulates is a trait that can be adaptive, and thus evolution can act upon it by natural selection.

Lead author Dr Sam England from Bristol’s School of Biological Sciences, explained: “We already knew that many species of animal accumulate static electricity as they fly, most likely through friction with the air. There had also been suggestions that this static electricity might improve the ability of flower-visiting animals, like bees and hummingbirds, to pollinate, by attracting pollen using electrostatic attraction.

“However, it wasn’t known whether this idea applied to the wider array of equally important pollinators, such as butterflies and moths. So, we set out to test this idea, and see if butterflies and moths also accumulate charge, and if so, whether this charge is enough to attract pollen from flowers onto their bodies.”

Their study involved 269 butterflies and moths across 11 different species, native to five different continents and inhabiting multiple different ecological niches. They were then then able to compare between them and see if these ecological factors correlated with their charge, establishing if static charging is a trait that evolution can act upon.

Dr England added: “A clearer picture is developing of how the influence of static electricity in pollination may be very powerful and widespread.

“By establishing electrostatic charging as a trait upon which evolution can act, it opens up a great deal of questions about how and why natural selection might lead to animals benefiting or suffering from the amount of static electricity that they accumulate.”

In terms of practical applications, this study opens the door to the possibility for technologies to artificially increase the electrostatic charges or pollinators or pollen, in order to improve pollination rates in natural and agricultural settings.

Dr England concluded: “We’ve discovered that butterflies and moths accumulate so much static electricity when flying, that pollen is literally pulled through the air towards them as they approach a flower.

“This means that they don’t even need to touch flowers in order to pollinate them, making them very good at their jobs as pollinators, and highlighting just how important they might be to the functioning of our flowery ecosystems.

“For me personally, I would love to do a wider survey of as many different species of animal as possible, see how much static electricity they accumulate, and then look for any correlations with their ecology and lifestyle. Then we can really begin to understand how evolution and static electricity interact!”

CAPTION

Peacock butterfly

CREDIT

Sam England

Paper:

‘Electrostatic pollination by butterflies and moths’ by Sam J. England and Daniel Robert in Journal of the Royal Society Interface.

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JOURNAL

Journal of The Royal Society Interface

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Experimental study

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

Animals

ARTICLE TITLE

Electrostatic pollination by butterflies and moths

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

24-Jul-2024