Will the creation of mechanical nano-insects solve the problem of declining populations of bees and other pollinating insects?
Please reply
I invite you to the discussion
Thank you very much
Best wishes
Solve the problem? Absolutely No. Minimize the problem? May be in a very tiny localized scale. Imagine number of plant species we have, existing number of specialized plant/pollinator interaction. How many robotics version of insects you need to replace the declining specific interactions?
Secondly, from biodiversity conservation point, this might be a window for negligence for pollinator conservation
Solve the problem? Absolutely No. Minimize the problem? May be in a very tiny localized scale. Imagine number of plant species we have, existing number of specialized plant/pollinator interaction. How many robotics version of insects you need to replace the declining specific interactions?
Secondly, from biodiversity conservation point, this might be a window for negligence for pollinator conservation
Absolutely agree with Thomas Sawe. Nature has taken thousands of years to develop characteristics in plants and insects to make pollination specific and efficient (insects; vibration of legs and antennae, hair in body or legs, the size of the tongue.Plants; pollen in male parts of the flower, length of floral tubules, colors, smells). There are no codes in the world that you can provide to mini-robots that can support that. Besides, these robotics bees are going to increse ecological problems. Besides, they can be more hard and heavy that a normal bee, they can cause damage to some sensitive flowers. I also have another questions from these non-natural "nano-polllinators" and the relation with environment.
How can be the disposal of them when they are not useful anymore, how you get the energy for then to work. How you direct them to the flowers. If they fall down in the field, how you avoid the polution that they can cause. In short, I do not want to be negative, but it is very difficult to replace organisms with thousands of years of evolutionary modeling. I think that to avoid the decline of bees, we must try to be more friendly with nature and not go in the same direction that causes its decline.
- Badges
- Science topic
- Similar topics
- Chemistry
- Nanotechnology