To combat malaria, scientists are revitalizing an area of research that is both biology and music. We are talking about the frequency of the wing flaps. What could such a clash of seemingly incompatible disciplines lead to? And why should people listen to insects?
Lidar method
For this, it is planned to use the lidar method. Its essence is to create laser radiation between two objects. When insects fly through a laser beam, light from them will be reflected back into telescopes, creating data that scientists hope to recognize different species. At a time when insects destroy crops that can feed the populations of several countries, and other insects carry diseases that kill hundreds of thousands of people every year, this system of rays and lenses has the potential to improve the quality of millions of lives.
Frequency features
Of course, lasers are an important state-of-the-art technology used in the lidar method, but its heart is the elegant and centuries-old principle of entomology. Almost every type of flying insect, from moths to mosquitoes, has its own unique wing-beating frequency. The female of one species of mosquito flaps her wings at a frequency of 350 hertz, while the female of another species has a wing-beat rate of 550 hertz. Because of this difference, the flap of an insect's wing is analogous to a human fingerprint. And in recent years, the scientific field of studying the frequency of wingbeats of insects is going through the Renaissance, especially in the field of human health.
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Hook's technique
Long before the advent of lasers and computers, wing flaps were thought of in an auditory (or even musical) sense. An attentive listener could match the buzzing of a particular insect to a note on the piano. This is exactly what the natural philosopher Robert Hook did in the 17th century. He could tell how many wing beats a particular insect does by comparing its sound to the sound of a particular note. But the fact that Hook relied solely on his own hearing created insurmountable difficulties in transferring his knowledge to other people. Knowledge was usually disseminated through scientific newspapers, letters and drawings of representatives of various species, so entomologists relied more on their sight than on hearing. For a long period of time, this scientific field had a very, very narrow focus.
Renewed interest
However, in the twentieth century, scientists began to take a new interest in this area, as the main way to determine the frequency of wingbeats became visual. It was the chronographic method, thanks to which a series of photographs with a high frame rate were created. However, this method had its limitations, so many researchers believed that Hook's method was still the best. Among them was Olavi Sotavalta, a Finnish entomologist who was gifted with perfect hearing. As a composer with perfect hearing, able to transcribe a piece of music by ear, Sotavalta was able to determine the exact tone of a mosquito's wings without the need for a piano.
Modern method
Now, thanks to high technologies using the lidar method, you can record up to four thousand frames per second. Later, scientists use a special algorithm that determines the flapping of the wings on these frames, calculating their frequency and thereby determining the insect's "fingerprint". In other words, this method achieves what Sotavalta was able to achieve with his perfect hearing, but now this data can be processed and transmitted to other scientists.
Experiment problems
Naturally, there are various problems associated with this experiment. For example, when in the area where it was held, people began to cook food, there was smoke in the air, which did not allow adequate assessment of insects, and the insects themselves did not behave as usual. However, one way or another, scientists have received fairly clear results. But it is one thing to see the flight of an insect on the graph of the apparatus, and it is quite another thing to tell the computer "Please, determine the appropriate frequency for me." Unlike Sotavalta, who was observing individual single insects, scientists in this experiment obtained data on thousands of insects, and at the same time they tried to analyze all this data at the same time. Scientists spent about twelve thousand dollars on their first experiment using the lidar method. Is it really worth spending such amounts of money? Wouldn't it have been better to use them for other needs? As the results show, the experiment was not meaningless or useless, it turned out to be more than successful, although more and more difficulties arose before scientists over and over again. Now they can, for example, recognize the frequency of the wings of mosquitoes that carry the horrific and often fatal disease of malaria.
Why is this needed?
Malaria is one of the clearest examples of how insects can threaten human health. However, there are many more ways insects can harm humans. Insects are carriers of microbial diseases. They also have a very serious impact on agriculture. According to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, insects kill about one-fifth of the Earth's harvest. In other words, if farmers had better ways to control locusts and various beetles, they could feed hundreds of millions more. Pesticides reduce the damage done by insects, but if used indiscriminately, as is often done, they can also harm both humans and beneficial insects. For instance,Humans rely heavily on bees, moths and butterflies as pollinators, but a 2016 study found that around 40 percent of invertebrate pollinator species are endangered. It is because of this relationship with insects that people need to look for better ways to identify species. Simply put, humans need to learn to identify which bugs are harming them and which are beneficial.
What's next?
The study of insect wingbeat frequency has changed dramatically since the time of Olavi Sotavalta, who used his perfect hearing to identify insects by the sound they make. In many ways, however, this cutting edge study is similar to what the Finnish entomologist did. Like Sotavalta, modern scientists are trying to combine several disciplines at once, in this case physics and biology, lidar and entomology, in order to learn how to determine the sequences in nature. However, they still have a lot of work ahead. In an upcoming scientific work, which scientists are going to publish, they will try to connect the dots between light, laser and insects. They will then try to demonstrate that insect wing-flap research can help humans control malaria and other diseases, as well as fight insects.that destroy crops. This is not a job for several months. This is a project that can take several years. However, the goals are more than noble, and the first results have already been obtained, so scientists know in which direction to move in order to achieve maximum effect.
Marina Ilyushenko