“This means that they don’t even need to touch flowers in order to pollinate them,"
So, the butterflies build up the charge as the fly around. Then they get near a flower and the pollen flies up and sticks to the butterfly. How does this pollinate other flowers? The pollen is stuck to the butterfly and not the flowers. Also, it seams it would mostly stick to the wings.
Just curios. It is a pretty amazing world around us.
„This pollen can then be deposited on subsequently visited flowers, either by direct contact, or similarly through electrostatic attraction, because the pollen can equalize to the potential of the pollinator, and will then experience an attractive force towards the electric field of the flower. Experimental evidence demonstrates this bidirectional electrostatic pollen transfer.“
[0] https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rsif.2024.015...
(i am guilty of this too lol)
Now, though, I am interested in the electrostatic properties of the flowers.
On the other hand, if the butterfly is eating the nectar and the pollination is an ancillary effect, then you have to start invoking more complicated mechanisms. Maybe successful pollination of the plants increases the food supply later? Maybe the flowers are not neutrally charged, but instead become oppositely charged when the pollen is ready to bias pollinators to come close at appropriate times? You can always construct some just-so story that fits the observed evidence, but where it becomes science is when you make predictions and test them.
On the other hand, the bees collect both nectar and pollen. Nectar to provide energy for themselves (which they dehydrate into honey, which can be stored for a long time, unlike fresh nectar), and pollen, which is rich in proteins, to feed their larvae, which need to grow into adults.