Abstract
Recently, a new utilization for light polarization has been demonstrated: the use of reflection polarizations from water surface to assess habitat quality and choose oviposition sites for water-living insects. While contradicting results were shown in the laboratory and at the natural habitat of long-living mosquitoes, their short-living, non-biting relatives, the chironomids (Chironomidae, midges, which serve as the host of the Cholera pathogen among many other species of bacteria), have shown clear response both under confined and unconfined conditions. The understanding of the advantage of following reflection polarizations to detect suitable reservoirs for oviposition opens a new research field of controlling pest insects using reflection-polarization traps, which has not been addressed to date.
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Acknowledgements
Our interdisciplinary chironomid project could not have been done without the guidance of experts of different disciplines. I am deeply grateful to O. Shoer for providing access to the study site, to J. Martin for species identification, to N. Meltser and M. Broza for introducing me to the chironomid biology, to M. Halpern for guiding me through the chironomid microbiology, to N. Sapir and E. Peltzer for their statistical assistance and to R. Jeger and Y. Lichtenfeld for their microscopy work. The chironomid project was funded by the Israel Science Foundation (grant no. 1527/07) to N. Shashar.
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Lerner, A. (2014). Polarization as a Guiding Cue for Oviposition in Non-biting Midges and Mosquitoes. In: Horváth, G. (eds) Polarized Light and Polarization Vision in Animal Sciences. Springer Series in Vision Research, vol 2. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-54718-8_21
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