What Are Insects Attracted To?

Source: A_Werdan

Oh, I’m in love with these light! 

Have you ever seen a movie called Wreck-It-Ralph where towards the end of the movie, there is one scene that all the flying cybugs kind of attracted to a source light at the center?

Well, basically majority of insects especially the flying one, have positive phototaxis and are naturally attracted to light. Some insects actually rely on certain light source like moon light to navigating. So, artificial light can somehow distort this behavior. That is why sometimes you can see they hover around the street lamp light at night.

Source: Totally Cool Pix

Common objects too, can somehow reflect similar polarization like natural water. These smooth surface, like glass surfaces, asphalt road, cars, gravestones, and solar panel, has also attracted many polarotactic aquatic insects (Horvath et al, 2014) but unfortunately, these smooth and shiny artificial surfaces have a negative effect and act as ecological trap for polarotactic aquatic insects. Aquatic insects attracted to strongly and horizontally polarizing dry artificial surfaces may perish due to dehydration or may oviposit onto these surfaces where eggs universally fail to survive (Horvath and Varju, 2004; Horvath and Kriska, 2008; Horvath et al, 2014).

Source: Horvath G., Kriska G., Malik P., and Robertson B. (2009). Polarized light pollution: a new kind of ecological photopollution. Frontier in Ecology and the Environment. 7(6): 317-325.

White glass window is better than black one as the polarization is not too high. Use plastic white sheet for farming, and black shiny gravestones somehow attract dragonflies. Try to choose yellow, not too shiny car as it it by far, the most environmental friendly color, so far, compared to black shiny car. And, too bad, insects attracted to polarized black solar panel too, and this could also be a problem as the interest of using ‘renewable’ energy is increasing especially in most cities.

 

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