Biotremology:
But Italian scientists have found a way to control leafhoppers without using chemicals or traps—in fact, their method isn’t even lethal. Using a laser device that picks up on tiny vibrations, researchers recorded the signals that males use to sweet-talk females. Then they attached small devices to plant stems to play back the pulsing noises they captured. It’s effectively shouting over the insects, preventing males from finding mates — though the sound isn’t audible to human ears. This experiment was also successfully tested on American grapevine leafhoppers.
This trick allowed the researchers to significantly silence males looking to hook up, which could help to deter their spread. It’s a clever method that could have broad implications for the agricultural industry, as more than 195,000 species of insect use vibrational signaling. The technology has emerged from a fairly new field known as biotremology, the study of vibrational communication in animals.
“There are a lot of pests that are not treated with environmentally-friendly strategies just because we don’t know their communication system,” says Rachele Nieri, an entomologist who worked on the project, along with two researchers from the U.S. Department of Agriculture, and Valerio Mazzoni, an agricultural entomologist at the Edmund Mach Foundation. “If we want to manipulate the behavior of a pest that doesn’t use chemicals, but vibration, we need to know their communication, their language, to be able to disrupt it.”
From “Wine And Whines: Listening To Insect Booty Calls To Preserve Vineyards,” Tony Farah, D-brief.
