In a field of winter wheat, researchers at the University of Reading's Sonning farm in the UK had planted an unusual fumigation system: eight 8-meter octagons surrounding clusters of black mustard plants.
In a field of winter wheat, researchers at the University of Reading's Sonning farm in the UK had planted an unusual fumigation system: eight 8-meter octagons surrounding clusters of black mustard plants. Each eight-sided “ring” would pump out either ozone, diesel exhaust, a combination of the two, or nothing. The researchers' goal was to test whether these common air pollutants would have an effect on the insects attracted to the mustard plants’ flowers.
Nearby, field researchers trained in pollinator observation stood as still as possible, diligently recording the number of visiting insects. The results of this study, published in January in the journal Environmental Pollution, found that those figures were dramatically lower in the rings emitting contaminants, compared to the control ring, which didn’t expel any.
The researchers did two separate counts. The first one counted the overall number of any kind of pollinator that flew into the rings and landed on at least one flower. Compared to the control ring, the number of visitors declined by 69 percent for diesel alone, 62 percent for ozone alone, and by 70 percent for a combination of both. The second metric counted visits by four distinct species—bees, moths, butterflies, and hoverflies—and took into account how many flowers each individual insect landed on. Compared to the control, the number of flower landings decreased by 89 percent for diesel, 83 percent for ozone, and 90 percent for both.
Read more at Wired
Photo Credit: Zsuzska321 via Pixabay
