From coffee to blueberries, more than 75 percent of the leading global-scale food crops — and nearly 90 percent of all wild flowering plant species — rely at least partially on pollinators like bees, ants and butterflies. Because these insects are so essential to our own food systems, scientists are seeking new ways to keep them healthy and fed.
One approach could involve sweet-and-salty nectar, according to new research. A team led by University of Vermont undergraduate Carrie Finkelstein placed five plant species — half of which contained an artificial, sodium-enriched nectar — in a meadow about the size of a basketball court and observed them for three hours a day. As reported in Biology Letters earlier this year, the flowers enriched with sodium attracted twice as many pollinators as their blander equivalents.
Previous work on honeybees has shown that they can detect sodium with their legs, of all things. But knowing they savor the salt could help small-scale and home gardeners attract bees and butterflies to their garden. Gardeners could, for example, “hack” the system by depositing a solution containing 1 percent salt on the parts of their flowers that dispense nectar (which varies depending on each plant species’ anatomy). First, however, researchers must determine the effect that this might have on the health of both pollinators and the pollinated.
