Researchers have found that insects can produce as much electrical charge in the atmosphere as a thunderstorm cloud by observing the electrical fields around swarming honeybees. This kind of energy aids in influencing weather patterns, helps insects discover food, and propels spiders into the air to travel long distances. The study, which was published on October 24 in the journal iScience, shows that living things can affect the electricity in the atmosphere.
According to lead author Ellard Hunting, a biologist at the University of Bristol, “we always looked at how physics affects biology, but at some point, we discovered that biology might also be impacting physics.” We’re curious about how various creatures make use of the static electric fields that permeate the environment almost everywhere.
Bees have an intrinsic electric charge, much like the majority of other living things. Scientists made a model that can predict how different kinds of insects will affect the environment after finding that honeybee hive swarms change the electricity in the air by 100 to 1,000 volts per meter, which makes the electric field force at ground level stronger than usual.
According to co-author and University of Bristol researcher Liam O’Reilly, the size and density of insect swarms determine how they affect atmospheric electricity. We also looked at how locusts affect the electricity in the air because they swarm in biblical numbers, covering 460 square miles in less than a square mile, and probably have a much bigger effect than honeybees.
Ellard says, “We just recently found that biology and static electric fields are closely related, and that there are many unknown links that can exist over different spatial scales, from microbes in the soil to interactions between plants and pollinators to insect swarms and possibly the global electric circuit.”
According to co-author Giles Harrison, an atmospheric physicist from the University of Reading, “interdisciplinarity is valuable here — electric charges can seem to exist entirely in physics, but it is important to know how aware the entire natural world is of electricity in the atmosphere.”
