[NatureNS] Insect decline

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To: Naturens <naturens@chebucto.ns.ca>
From: David Webster <dwebster@glinx.com>
Date: Mon, 27 Apr 2020 19:48:01 -0300
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&lt;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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