Rebugging the Planet: The Remarkable Things That Insects (And Other Invertebrates) Do – and Why We Need to Love Them More by Vicki Hird

Author:Vicki Hird [Hird, Vicki]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: nature, animals, Insects & Spiders, Ecology, Gardening, Techniques, Butterflies & Moths, Environmental Conservation & Protection, Organic, science, Life Sciences, Biological Diversity, General
ISBN: 9781645020196
Google: pkxDEAAAQBAJ
Publisher: Chelsea Green Publishing
Published: 2021-09-16T23:35:38.813459+00:00

The Namib desert beetle and water conservation

Water is obviously a basic need. Finding new and low-energy ways to conserve water is becoming a considerable task as we face droughts and more irregular weather patterns due to climate breakdown. An invertebrate providing some useful insight is a species of darkling beetle, the Namib beetle, which lives in the African Namib desert, one of the driest places on the planet. It is a tiny beetle, but it has evolved an incredible behavioural and physiological way to pull water out of air.16

On cold mornings, when a fog wafts in from the Atlantic Ocean, the insect makes its way to the top of a dune and does a head stand, tilting its back into the breeze - a stance called fog-basking behaviour. Its waxy exoskeleton, with a pattern of nodes along the beetle’s back, create a large and purposefully designed surface area that collects moisture from the morning fog. The droplets are then directed into small channels and on towards the beetle’s mouth. Academics at Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the US have studied this design and are currently developing new water-catching materials that will be cheap, durable and more effective than current approaches.

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