Electroreception – the biological ability to perceive natural electrical stimuli – may arise from the bees’ hairs being lightweight and stiff.
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Bumblebees know flowers are near because they have tiny hairs that vibrate, responding to electric signals from the flowers.
A team of researchers posited that the fields might exert a small force that moves structures on the bee’s body, perhaps their antennae or body hairs.
“We had this hypothesis that maybe an electrical field would cause a motion in the antenna, just like when you rub your hair on a balloon and you move the balloon away and it pulls on your hair”, said Gregory Sutton, the study’s lead author and a Royal Society research fellow at the University of Bristol.
The findings, published in the global journal Proceedings of National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) today, suggest that electroreception in insects may be widespread.
The 2013 discovery that bees can sense electric fields came as a surprise to Sutton and his colleagues. When antennae were stimulated with an electric field, the researchers found that they did, in fact, move in response. Yet, bumblebees display sensitivity to the electric fields surrounding flowers and those created by other bees when they perform their signature waggle dance. But when they tested the bees’ body hairs, they found an even greater reaction.
Noting that mechanosensory hairs are common in arthropods, they suggest that electroreception could be a widespread phenomenon that provides insects with a variety of now unrecognized abilities. Sharks, for example, have sensitive, jelly-like receptors that detect tiny fluctuations in electric fields in seawater, which helps them locate and then close in on their prey.
Many ways are being used to strengthen the relationship between a particular flower and the bumblebee like color, shape, scent and also, patterns visible only in ultraviolet light and their electric fields.
Sutton mentioned that there are many insects having body hairs, which means that many members of the insect world might be equally sensitive to small electric fields. While the scent, color, and shape of flowers help attract pollinators, plants want the given pollinator to stick around. As such, the relationships between these insects and the flowers they pollinate are of vital interest. “It’s widely known that flowers release electric signals in the air to attract their pollinators but very little was known about the pollinator’s response and how they interpret those signals”, according to a news report published by I4U News.
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Scientists first placed 30 volts in artificial flowers and used a precise laser vibrometer to measure the movement of antennae and hair in bumblebees. “This shows us that we really don’t know much about the insects we deal with on a daily basis”, Sutton told Mashable. Bees are crucial pollinators and understanding their sensing ability has revealed the co-evolution of their flowers and their pollinators on which our crops and plants depend heavily.
