Vendredi 28 février à 11h00 ; salle des séminaires IUSTI
Working together to exchange nutrition for pollination services, bees and flowers interact relying on vision, olfaction, touch and humidity sensing. We have discovered that bees can also detect and learn about the weak electric field that arises as they approach a flower. This electric field is generated because flying bees are usually electrically positively charged whilst flowers tend to be negatively charged. A third and more elusive component that contributes to this electric interaction is the atmospheric potential gradient (APG) that is a consequence of the ionization of the atmosphere and the global electric circuit. I will present our current understanding of this triadic interaction (Bee-flower-APG), but also discuss the role that triboelectrification and Coulomb force may play in the lives of other terrestrial arthropods and plants. This work opens up the enticing possibility that many arthropod species, in fact the majority animal species, are capable of aerial electroreception, a sensory modality previously unknown.