HARVESTING WATER FROM FOG

      Fog blowing off the southern Atlantic Ocean is the most predictable, reliable source of daily fresh water in the Namib Desert along the west coast of southwestern Africa, if you can harvest that fog.  

     Certain kinds of darkling beetles in the Namib harvest water from fog, which allows them to survive in one of the driest environments on Earth.  Each morning, those beetles clamber up the sand dunes to their crests and stand still in "head-stand" positions on them, a behavior called "fog-basking".  The wind-driven fog rolls over the beetles, some of it getting trapped as droplets on the tips of bumps on the beetles' wing covers.  The droplets dribble down to a waxy surface between the bumps on the wing covers, making them soaking wet, and slide down the beetle's head-down posture to its mouth so each beetle can drink that life-giving, fresh water.  Though the head-stands, and bumps and wax on the wing covers are small adaptations on a one-inch beetle, they are major ones in the beetles' surviving in a really dry desert.        

     Perhaps long ago, all darkling beetle species did not have those bumps or waxy areas on their wing covers, and did not engage in head-stands.  But as their habitat became drier and drier, some individuals, by chance, developed those features that, by happy coincidence, allowed them to get water from wind-blown fog, which allowed them to survive in deserts.  But those individuals that did not develop those features long ago died out in the Namib.  Today, bumpy beetles survive in the Namib.

     Darkling beetles, and their beige-colored, worm-like larvae, ingest bits of vegetation, the adults on top of the sand and juveniles under it.  The larvae absorb water through their abdomens from the fog-dampened sand.  

     Lizards, spiders and other kinds of desert creatures prey on darkling beetles and their larvae.  Like all critters, these beetles are part of food chains in the wild.

     These beetles can help solve water shortage problems that millions of people have throughout the world.  When scientists find the right combination of materials to attract fog to form droplets and ways to conduct those droplets into large containers, some water shortage problems should be solved.  We can learn from Namib's darkling beetles, and other species of plants and animals, to make life better for humans.       

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