Polarized light guides cholera-carrying midges that contaminate wate...( Cholera is a major killer and since ...)

Cholera is a major killer and since the first pandemic in the early 19th century it has claimed millions of lives. According to Amit Lerner from The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel, the lethal infection is harboured by an equally infamous insect: chironomids (midges). Lerner explains that the females contaminate water sources with the deadly bacteria when laying their eggs. He adds that his colleagues Nikolay Meltser and Meir Broza had found that females actively choose the body of water where they lay their eggs, but it wasn't clear what drives a female to select a particular pond. Meltser and Broza had noticed that the tormenting insects prefer patches of water that reflect little light, and when they heard that dark water reflects more polarized light than brightly lit water the pair wondered whether the insects were basing their choice on the amount of polarized light reflected by water or the brightness of the reflection. Broza contacted animal polarization vision expert Nadav Shashar and his student Lerner to find out whether polarization or intensity was the guiding factor for midges. The team publish their discovery that midges are attracted to polarized reflections in The Journal of Experimental Biology on 31st October 2008 at http://jeb.biologists.org .

First Lerner and Meltser had to prove that the insects could use polarized light to select egg-laying sites. Tempting the irritating insects into a tent at dusk, they offered them a choice of four trays of tap water to lay their eggs in. Two trays were illuminated with polarized light, one at high intensity and the other at low intensity. The remaining two trays were illuminated with bright and dim unpolarized light. Returning to the tent the next day, the duo counted the numbers of egg clusters laid in each tray, and found that over 60% of the females chose to lay their eggs in trays emitting polarized light, with more than 40% of the fema
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