Research suggests pollinator buzzing sounds lead plants to increase their nectar production.
Research suggests pollinator buzzing sounds lead plants to increase their nectar production.
When pollinators visit flowers, they produce a variety of characteristic sounds, from wing flapping during hovering, to landing and takeoff. However, these sounds are extremely small compared to other vibrations and acoustics of insect life, causing researchers to overlook these insects’ acoustic signals often related to wing and body buzzing.
Francesca Barbero, a professor of zoology at the University of Turin, and her collaborators — an interdisciplinary mix of entomologists, sound engineers, and plant physiologists from Spain and Australia — studied these signals to develop noninvasive and efficient methods for monitoring pollinator communities and their influences on plant biology and ecology.
Barbero will present her findings and their impacts on Wednesday, May 21, at 9 a.m. CT as part of the joint 188th Meeting of the Acoustical Society of America and 25th International Congress on Acoustics, running May 18-23.
Read more at Acoustical Society of America
Photo Credit: DerWeg via Pixabay
