Now the researchers know what makes the infected mantises dive into the water, the next step is understanding the neural mechanism behind this behavior. This indicates that not only do hairworms induce their hosts to take the plunge, they may also make them do so at a certain time of day. The insects were observed in the lab to walk around more at noon, and many of the insects that entered the water did so around midday. Some of the results of the study also suggest that the circadian cycle has a part to play in this parasitic behavior alteration. Only one uninfected mantis decided to take a swim. Of the 16 infected mantids that leapt into the water, 14 chose to enter the pool reflecting horizontally polarized light. They then released 31 infected mantids and 19 uninfected mantids into a tree between the two pools and observed the aftermath via video. ![]() The study then moved outdoors to a mesh enclosure containing two pools. One pool was deep and dimly reflected horizontally polarized light, and the other was shallow and had a stronger light reflection that was only weakly polarized. Interestingly, this was not observed when the light was vertically polarized rather than horizontally. It was observed that after 10 minutes, mantids infected with hairworm were more likely to gravitate towards the polarized light than their uninfected counterparts. First, the insects were placed in the middle of a cylinder that produced polarized light at one end and non-polarized light at the other. The researchers conducted two different experiments using the praying mantis species Hierodula patellifera. ![]() Light reflected off water is mostly horizontally polarized, and previous research has suggested that insects can use this property of light to detect water, either to avoid it or seek it out. Normally, the wave can oscillate in any orientation, but polarized light only wiggles in one plane. Light is an electromagnetic wave that that oscillates up and down perpendicular to its direction of movement. Instead, the researchers hypothesize that the attraction is down to the polarization of the reflected light.
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