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<d Dear All, The May issue of National Geographic features insect decline and this naturally affects everything. There can be little doubt that motor vehicle traffic is a major factor by collision but, recalling an old observation, perhaps there are other mechanisms. I am not sure when, by guess about 1995, I was walking along the south side of the 101 in the vicinity of Coldbrook and noticed huge numbers of small dead dung beetles by the roadside and a noticeable odor of hog manure. By huge numbers I mean almost contiguous over a large area where a side road, severed by the 101 previously had continued north. So one could conclude that manure smell had attracted them and traffic had killed them. The French Press, devised not in France but by a researcher with surname French, is used to fragment small cell organelles such as chloroplasts suspended in a liquid under high pressure by suddenly decreasing pressure when a drain is opened and some flow out. Insects, not having lungs must have appreciable air filled cavities, and I wonder if they experience an explosive change in pressure when they flow under a large transport truck, at perhaps pressure higher than atmospheric and then instantly go back to atmospheric when the truck passes. This could be tested directly, after lock down is lifted, by placing some live insects held in a weighted window screen cage and placed in a suitably located pothole. Yt, DW, Kentville
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