Insects, Magnets, and Climate Change: Finding Magnetic Solutions for Climate-Driven Insect Movements

Overview

Climate change has caused global temperature to rise and is leading to more insects migrating up north to areas like Riverside, California. Soon there will be many new bugs in areas that have never dealt with these insects, which include insects that can carry deadly and dangerous diseases. The purpose of this project is to see magnetic fields can be used to attract or repel a diverse set of insects, so when more insects move into new areas like Riverside, we will have more protection from these deadly insects. I created 3 different bug traps to test if insects can be attracted or repelled with magnetic fields: the first trap has a static magnet underneath it, the second trap has an electromagnet underneath it, and the third trap has nothing under it, making it the control. I predicted that the insect trap with the static magnet would attract and capture the most bugs because the static magnet resembles Earth’s magnetic field, which some insects might detect and respond to. I did the experiments three times. Each test consisted of leaving the traps out for 3-days and then observed what bugs had been caught. After all three tests I analyzed my results. It seemed that the control and the static magnet trap had caught around the same total bugs, so my hypothesis initially seemed incorrect. However, the results ended up being more complex when I looked more closely at my data, by separating the bugs caught into crawling insect and flying insect groups. When I looked at how many flying insects the static magnet trap caught compared to the control, the static magnet caught significantly more flying insects. On the other hand, the electromagnet trap caught far fewer insects overall. Or, in other words, when compared to the control, the electromagnet trap repelled significantly more crawling insects and flying insects. Then I also looked at how many mosquitoes each trap had caught, since mosquitoes are one of the main ways deadly diseases are transferred to humans from insects. Interestingly, the electromagnet was not only the best at repelling all insects, but the electromagnet trap was very effective at repelling mosquitos specifically, since the trap completely repelled mosquitoes. Overall, my experiment demonstrates that magnetic fields can be used to attract or repel insects, which could potentially help control disease carrying insects in the future.

Competition history

• CSEF 2026 Zoology (Junior Division) · Entry J-20-02

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