CATCHING the whiff of a nearby massacre has a strange effect on spider mites: it sends them straight to sleep.
Martijn Egas and colleagues at the University of Amsterdam in the Netherlands noticed that when the mites encountered predators, they went into hiding and entered a dormant state called diapause, normally used during long periods of cold, drought or famine.
Curious about whether this discovery could be used against the crop-destroying mites, the team put them inside parallel wind tunnels that were infused with air from chambers containing other spider mites that were either peacefully munching on bean leaves, or…
