Will gardeners of the future bribe bees and butterflies with homemade, saltwater solutions? Plants could already be employing the same technique. Head to the story by clicking the link below. Pollinators DiscoverMagazine
studied herbivorous insects and their reliance on sodium from a biogeographic perspective. Joshua Lynn, a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Bergen in Norway and lead author of the paper, scoured the scientific literature for data on insects’ consumption of plants. He then combined it with maps to find that latitudes of greater sodium deposition experienced greater plant consumption.
His research refutes an old-timey latitude theory, which stated that herbivory increases toward the tropics no matter what. “It's a zombie idea that keeps on consuming people's brains to keep trying to test it,” says Lynn, adding that both oceans and cities may even be getting saltier due to climate change. This could be a problem for plants that are devoured by salt-hungry insect herbivores.
Emilie Snell-Rood, lead author of that paper and an associate professor of ecology, evolution and behavior at the University of Minnesota, cites evidence that male butterflies that foraged for minerals such as sodium in wet mud had better flying ability. She speculates that female butterflies who consume salt may have improved vision, which leads to higher skill at locating plants to lay their eggs on.Questions remain, of course.
For now, it’s clear that pollinators can detect sodium in nectar — and they seem to really like it. “I tell people to imagine doing an experiment where you put out a big bowl of unsalted french fries right next to a big bowl of salted french fries and just let people pick which one they want,” Sanders says. “Pollinators are just as wise to sodium as we are. We do it for taste, but they're likely doing it also to increase their fitness.
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