Charged fly particles

Some parasitic nematodes are known to propel themselves explosively into the air to land on their insect prey. A new study by UC Berkeley and Emory University biologists and physicists suggests that they’re not just blindly leaping into the unknown, hoping against hope to hit their mark. They actually rely on an electrical attraction to home in on their host. Victor Ortega-Jiménez, a UC Berkeley assistant professor of integrative biology, and his colleagues tested a hypothesis that the electrical attraction between tiny animals is important for finding and capturing food. In 2013, he discovered that spider webs take advantage of the charge of flying insects to electrostatically ensnare them as they pass by. And he recently wrote a commentary about the discovery that ticks are electrically attracted to furry animals thanks to the static charge they generate, similar to that produced by rubbing a balloon through your hair. From those observations, Ortega-Jiménez began to wonder if nematodes, which are as slender as strands of spider silk, might be pulled toward charged flying insects. For full story, visit: news.berkeley.edu Video by Victor Ortega-Jimenez http://news.berkeley.edu/ http://www.facebook.com/UCBerkeley http://twitter.com/UCBerkeley http://instagram.com/ucberkeleyofficial