The Hidden World of Electrostatic Ecology

The magic of animal electrostatics is all about size. Large animals don’t meaningfully experience nature’s static — we’re too big to feel it. “As humans, we are living mostly in a gravitational or fluid-dynamics world,” Ortega-Jiménez said. But for tiny beings, gravity is an afterthought. Insects can feel air’s viscosity. While the same laws of physics reign over Earth’s smallest and largest species, the balance of forces shifts with size. Intermolecular forces flex beneath the feet of water striders on a pond, capillary forces shoot water impossibly upward through a plant’s thin roots, and electrostatic forces can ensnare any oppositely charged flecks that lie in their path.

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If static charges aid pollination, they could shift plant evolution, too. “Maybe some fundamental features of flowers are actually just in service of generating the correct electrostatic field,” Dornhaus said, “and because we can’t see them, we’ve ignored that whole dimension of a flower’s life.” The idea isn’t so far-fetched: In 2021, Robert’s team observed petunias releasing more compounds that attract bugs (opens a new tab) around beelike electric fields. This suggests that flowers wait until a pollinator is nearby to actively lure them closer, Robert said.

“Humans are very visually oriented, so we tend to emphasize flowers that are showy and large,” Dornhaus said. But we already know that flowers transmit strong invisible signals, like scents or ultraviolet patterns. “It may well be that for some flowers, the electric field is actually a more prominent signal to bees than color is.”

However, evolutionary details surrounding electrostatic ecology remain murky at best. “It’s amazing, really, how little we know,” said Wainwright, the insect evolutionary ecologist. Even within better-understood visual and acoustic systems, ecologists are only beginning to connect evolutionary dots.

Because electrostatics has flown under the radar, England worries that humans unknowingly hinder the ability of animals to use these forces. “We’re spitting electrostatic stuff into the environment all the time,” he said. Electronic devices, appliances, power lines, fertilizers (opens a new tab) and even clothing bear static charges. “If [insects are] sensitive to the wingbeat of a wasp, they’re probably sensitive to a power line, and it might be messing up that entire system.”

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