The differential impact of air pollution on insect chemical communication
Ben Langford, Jonathan Williams, Jérôme Casas · 2026
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Description
Ben Langford, Jonathan Williams, and Jérôme Casas warn that dirty air garbles insect scent talk unevenly in a 2026 study. Insects court and alarm by airborne chemicals, and pollution eats those signals at rates set by each chemical's build.
Alarm scents are small, light, and simple, so they stay airborne about as long in dirty air as clean. Sex scents are bigger and stickier, and night pollution slashes their range, partly by soaking them into particles. That soaking may also shield them from decay. The upshot: mating channels suffer most, a subtle route by which smog reshapes insect life.
Catalog record
| CREATOR | Ben Langford, Jonathan Williams, Jérôme Casas |
|---|---|
| YEAR | 2026 |
| COLLECTION | PAPERS |
| FORMAT | TXT |
| FILE SIZE | 59 KB |
| VERSION | 1.0 |
| LICENSE | CC BY 4.0 |
| RIGHTS | CC BY |
| SOURCE | Europe PMC |