Pulled like a month to the fire — or not?
A new study appears to have rendered that idiom obsolete, debunking a long-held belief — dating back to the Roman Empire around 1 AD — that flying bugs are attracted to light.
In contrast, many insects do not fly directly to the light source and actually turn their backs on the light when they flutter around outdoor lanterns, lampposts, and porch lights at night, the study published last week in Nature Communications states.
But another proverb can be used to describe the behavior of winged bugs around the lamp. They don’t know how to rise from below when in front of artificial lighting, a Jan. 30 study found.
An international team of researchers believe that lights turned on by humans confuse insects that normally use the brightest thing they notice – the sky – to determine what is there and what is not in flight.
The researchers found that the insects did not fly directly to the light source and actually turned their backs on it. Simon Kovacic – stock.adobe.com
Scientists think that insects misuse artificial lights for the sky, which is why they turn their backs – or the upper part of their bodies – towards the light source, trapping them in an “exhausting cycle” to reorient themselves in space, according to the new. release accompanying the study.
The study authors recorded the movements of 11 different orders of insects with high-speed motion capture cameras – first in a controlled laboratory experiment and then in the cloud forests of Costa Rica, home to a diverse ecosystem of insect species.
“In one of the first experiments, I let a large yellow butterfly take off from my hand and fly directly over the UV bulb, and it immediately flipped over,” said one of the researchers, Yash Sondhi, a postdoctoral researcher at the History Museum. Florida nature. “But we don’t know if the behaviors we see and measure in the lab will also be seen in the wild.”
Scientists believe insects use the brightest sky to determine up from down when flying and may mistake artificial lights for the sky — confusing them. Alexey Protasov – stock.adobe.com
The researchers recorded more than 477 videos and used computer vision tools to reconstruct the flight paths of their bug test subjects in 3D modeling. Almost all the insects they recorded turned their backs on the light source.
“You watch the video in slow motion and watch it over and over again,” said author Sondhi’s report in a new release published by the Florida Museum. “Maybe when people notice it, like around their patio lights or street lights, it looks like they’re flying right at it, but that’s not the case.”
The scientists observed three distinct movement patterns among the butterflies, moths, bees, wasps, dragonflies and more they recorded – orbiting the light source, halting – characterized by a steep ascent – and overturning.
In some cases when insects fly directly over a bright light, they will completely flip over and crash down. New Africa – stock.adobe.com
At its most extreme, inversion occurs when an insect flies directly over a light causing it to completely flip over and often crash to the ground.
“This has become a prehistoric question. In the earliest writings, people noticed this around fires,” said report author and Florida International University biology professor Jamie Theobald. “It turns out all our speculation about why it happened was wrong, so this is definitely the coolest project I’ve ever been a part of. “
Categories: Trending
Source: thtrangdai.edu.vn/en/
