Study: Sprinkling salt on the roads affects the growth of butterflies

ArabiaWeather.com - A recent study published in the United States showed that spraying salt on the roads in winter leads to changes in the growth of some butterflies.

Sodium chloride, which sells cheaply, is the most widely used substance for melting snow and ice that covers roads.

In a previous study, it was found that the salt that is sprinkled on the roads has an impact on the ecosystem of lakes and rivers, and the researchers analyzed the growth of monarch butterflies and white butterflies that were feeding on the wrapping plant and its flowers, which is one of the weeds that often grows on the side of the roads.

"Amounts of salt, which are usually limited in this ecosystem, play an important role in growth," said Emily Snell-Rodd, a biologist at the University of Minnesota (North) and the lead author of this study.

She studied monarch butterflies, which are an ideal model for research since they mainly feed on the wrapping plant.

Scientists compared monarch butterflies that grow with a wrapping plant that is collected near one of the roads in Minnesota and another with the same type of plants that come from a field far from the roads, to show them that the herbs coming from the roadside can contain in their tissues amounts of salt up to thirty times more than The normal range.

When butterflies eat these herbs, their salt level increases significantly, with different effects depending on the sex. Thus, in males, salt leads to a large growth in the muscles used for flight, while the opposite occurs in females. In contrast, the brain size increases in females but not in males.

While any moderate increase in the amounts of salt that these butterflies ingest can have positive effects, excess amounts of salt have toxic effects, leading to greater mortality.

The survival rate of monarch butterfly larvae fed on roadside detours containing high amounts of salt was much lower (40.5%) than those fed on field weeds (58.2%).

And "Rodd" considered that such studies should be conducted in urban areas where larger amounts of salt are used in winter on the roads, with the aim of determining its effect on other organisms . and change the soil structure.