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AQUATIC FORMS. “In aquatic animals, electroreception relies on direct transmission of stimulus from the conductive medium (water) to the nervous system, via conductive receptor channels (ampullae of Lorenzini).” https://lnkd.in/dz2UJCDk View in LinkedIn

CHARGE LANGUAGE. “It is also crucial to intraspecific electrical communication in honey bees; the dancing bee must be charged to convey electrical signals to fellow bees within the hive. A bee’s bulk charge will also induce stronger electrical interactions between itself and any flower it visits, strengthening electrostatic forces on pollen. The mechanism by which bees gain their charge, however, is not well understood.” https://lnkd.in/dz2UJCDk View in LinkedIn

“ELECTRORECEPTION, defined as the ability of an organism to detect external electric forces, has long been known in animals living in aquatic, electrically conductive environments, for example, in fish, in amphibians, and in platypus.” https://lnkd.in/dz2UJCDk View in LinkedIn

TWO CHARGE SOURCES. “Bees are not electrically connected to the earth, like flowers are, yet they also gain a charge as they fly through the air. The acquisition and maintenance of charge on a bee is a key factor in their ability to detect electric fields, with just slight increases in charge causing large gains in electromechanical sensitivity of both hairs and antennae.” https://lnkd.in/dz2UJCDk View in LinkedIn

A NEW DIMENSION. “Here, we present an aspect of plant–pollinator interactions that has been underappreciated thus far: the presence of electrostatic forces between bees and flowers.” https://lnkd.in/dz2UJCDk View in LinkedIn

THE ZONE. “At the scale of the flower, we name the local distortions in background e-field around a flower, the “floral electric field”. This is the scale at which bees are acting and interacting.” https://lnkd.in/dz2UJCDk View in LinkedIn

HIGH COST. “The nectar reward is expensive for the plant to produce. In milkweed, up to 37% of the daily photosynthetic energy is spent producing nectar reward for pollinators, energy that is no longer available to the plant.” https://lnkd.in/dz2UJCDk View in LinkedIn

PLANT ELECTRIC FIELDS. “5 m tall trees growing on flat ground are shown to produce substantial alterations in the electric field strength in the surrounding air. The positive charge in the atmosphere draws a negative charge to the surface of the trees.” https://lnkd.in/dz2UJCDk View in LinkedIn

ANCIENT CO-ASSOCIATION. “Flowers use bees as vehicles to enhance pollen transport and fertilization, while bees greatly benefit from pollen and nectar as food sources. This co-evolutionary relationship turns out to be rich and complex.” https://lnkd.in/dz2UJCDk View in LinkedIn

INSECT WIDE ORGANS. “Neither mechanosensory hairs nor antennae are unique to bees. It is, therefore, possible that other arthropods also use these structures to detect electric fields. Mechanosensory structures in insects have previously been shown to be involved in detection of various fluid-mechanical signals, by a diverse range of arthropods.” https://lnkd.in/dz2UJCDk View in LinkedIn