Some beetles “drink” using their butts, and scientists are starting to understand how.
Red flour beetles, a major agricultural pest, open their anus to get water vapor in the air flowing into the lower gut and condensing on any poop there. The insects draw water out of the fecal materialThis “amazing mechanism” could one day be exploited to make beetle-specific pesticides that could protect crops while safeguarding bees and other insects, says Kenneth Halberg, a comparative endocrinologist and physiologist at the University of Copenhagen.
But “the paradox was that they don’t look like transporting cells,” says Michael O’Donnell, an insect physiologist at McMaster University in Hamilton, Canada, who was not involved with the research.produces a protein that pumps charged potassium particles across the cells’ membranes, Halberg’s team found. That may result in a buildup of the ions on the outside of the rectal complex, the researchers suspect.
Through osmosis, water will move toward areas with a high concentration of ions. So that pool of potassium could allow beetles to move water through the wall of the rectal complex and into the rest of the body. Experiments confirmed that the insects opened their anuses in high humidity so water vapor could flow into the rectal complex. What’s more, beetles withIt’s not clear whether other beetles use a similar mechanism, Halberg says. But the finding emphasizes how “nature has its way of developing some quite interesting solutions to some very interesting problems.”
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