Insects: The tremendous electrical power of honey bees
Swarms of bees can alter atmospheric electricity by 100 to 1000 volts per meter
Source: Ellard Hunting
Phenomena such as thunderstorms and dust storms create large electric fields in the atmosphere. Researchers have now identified another source: insects. Clustered in dense swarms, they can charge the air to a similar extent.
EAccording to a study, a swarm of insects can generate as much electrical charge in the atmosphere as a thundercloud and thus influence the weather, among other things. A research team reports that the animals probably also contribute to the transport of air particles in this way in the journal “iScience”.
It should be borne in mind with the hitherto hardly considered effect that birds and microorganisms carry charges and are widespread in the lower atmosphere – the extent of the resulting electrical interactions in the atmosphere must now be researched more closely.
There are numerous sources of electrical charge in the atmosphere that affect processes such as the formation of droplets and the elimination of dust and aerosols. The electric field there is correspondingly variable. So far, living beings or biological processes have not been taken into account as charge sources in models – although they do play a role in fluctuations in atmospheric electricity, the research team explains.
It is known for numerous species of insects that they carry an electrical charge of picocoulombs to nanocoulombs per individual. Large concentrations of flying insects could thus be an important source of space charge in the atmosphere.
“Biology can also influence physics,” says one of the English researchers
Source: Ellard Hunting
The scientists led by Ellard Hunting from the University of Bristol first measured the electric field in the vicinity of swarming honey bees. Such swarms can change the atmospheric electricity by 100 to 1000 volts per meter and increase the electric field strength that usually exists near the ground. “We’ve always studied how physics affects biology, but at some point we realized that biology could also affect physics,” says first author Hunting.
Based on the data obtained, the team developed a model that estimates the impact of other swarming insects, such as flying ones ants, grasshopperswandering butterflies and mosquitoes calculated. “How insect swarms affect atmospheric electricity depends on their density and size,” explains co-author Liam O’Reilly of the University of Bristol.
For certain locusts, for example, where a swarm can contain 80 million animals in less than a square mile (2.6 km²), the impact on atmospheric electricity is likely to be much greater than for bee swarms. Swarms of desert locusts (Schistocerca gregaria) have the potential to alter their local electrical environment on a scale comparable to meteorological events such as a thundercloud.
The researchers write that this form of atmospheric space charge is not yet taken into account in current climate models. The atmospheric space charge enhances, among other things, the aggregation and movement of air particles, so it is conceivable that the charges generated by insects contribute to spatial changes in air particles. An influence on the long-distance transport of desert dust is possible.
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