New research shows how the nematode Caenorhabditis elegans, a long-used model organism, can use electric fields to ‘jump’ across Petri plates or onto insects, allowing them to glide through the air and attach themselves, for example, onto naturally charged bumblebee chauffeurs.
“Pollinators, such as insects and hummingbirds, are known to be electrically charged, and it is believed that pollen is attracted by the electric field formed by the pollinator and the plant,” said Hiroshima University’s Professor Takuma Sugi.
“However, it was not completely clear whether electric fields are utilized for interactions between different terrestrial animals.”
Professor Sugi and colleagues first began investigating this project when they noticed that the worms they cultivated often ended up on the lids of Petri dishes, opposite to the agar they were placed on.
When they attached a camera to observe this behavior, they found that it was not just because worms were climbing up the walls of the dish. Instead, they were leaping from the floor of the plate to the ceiling.
Suspecting travel by electric field, the researchers placed worms on a glass electrode and found that they only leaped to another electrode once charge was applied.
Worms jumped at an average speed of 0.86 m per second (close to a human’s walking speed), which increased with electric field intensity.
Next, the scientists rubbed flower pollen on a bumblebee so that it could exhibit a natural electric charge. Once close to these bees, worms stood on their tails, then jumped aboard.
Some worms even piled on top of each other and jumped in a single column, transferring 80 worms at once across the gap.
“Worms stand on their tail to reduce the surface energy between their body and the substrate, thus making it easier for themselves to attach to other passing objects,” Professor Sugi said.
“In a column, one worm lifts multiple worms, and this worm takes off to transfer across the electric field…
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