How Biology influences Physics: Insects and atmospheric electricity

Bees have a more intimate relationship with electricity than you might expect. They sense changes in electric fields to navigate to flowers. Static charges play a role in helping pollen stick to them. And they can gain an electric charge as they fly through the air.

By measuring the electrical fields near swarming honeybees, researchers have discovered that insects can produce as much atmospheric electric charge as a thunderstorm cloud. This type of electricity helps shape weather events, aids insects in finding food, and lifts spiders up in the air to migrate over large distances. The research, appearing on October 24 in the journal iScience, demonstrates that living things can have an impact on atmospheric electricity.

We always looked at how physics influenced biology, but at some point, we realized that biology might also be influencing physics.

As with most living creatures, bees carry an innate electric charge. Having found that honeybee hive swarms change the atmospheric electricity by 100 to 1,000 volts per meter, increasing the electric field force normally experienced at ground level, researchers developed a model that can predict the influence of other species of insects. They also  calculated the influence of locusts on atmospheric electricity, as locusts swarm on biblical scales, sizing 460 square miles with 80 million locusts in less than a square mile; their influence is likely much greater than honeybees.

Scientists only recently discovered that biology and static electric fields are intimately linked and that there are many unsuspected links that can exist over different spatial scales, ranging from microbes in the soil and plant-pollinator interactions to insect swarms and perhaps the global electric circuit.

How insect swarms influence atmospheric electricity depends on their density and size. Insects can have similar effects on atmospheric electricity as weather events.

Apart from insects, birds and microorganisms also carry charge and abound in the lower atmosphere . The observed presence and magnitude of biogenic space charge invites further interdisciplinary research into the dynamic electrical interactions between physical and biological entities in the atmosphere.

 Liam J. O'Reilly, Observed electric charge of insect swarms and their contribution to atmospheric electricity, iScience (2022). DOI: 10.1016/j.isci.2022.105241. www.cell.com/iscience/fulltext … 2589-0042(22)01513-9