There Are a Ridiculous Lot of Invertebrate Traces in Your Cup of Tea

Even in the air, bits of our former selves are left behind. Our trail of self is made up of various fluids like saliva and waste.

There are no exceptions to the rule of bugs. Insturments leave a trail of evidence in their wake, including over any tea leaves they may have chewed.

In only 40 samples of dried tea and herbs, scientists found evidence of 1,200 different species of Insturments.

The geneticist told Shawna Williams that he was surprised by the high diversity. A single tea bag contained up to 400 species of insects.

In the samples of commercially produced teas and herbs bought in German grocery stores, researchers found the trails of 3,264 invertebrates from all over the world. There were many different types of insects with traces of their genes.

The stunning diversity is thought to be due to the way the dried herbs are ground up and the way the crops are grown.

The environmental DNA provides a snapshot of the flora and fauna in the area, as well as the location of the plants.

TheDried plant material appears to be a novel tool to monitor arthropods and plant interactions, detect agricultural pests, and identify the geographical origin of imported plant material.

They caution that the approach is not free of biases and will need further standardization in the future.

Scientists don't know if certain plants will go undetected because they leave less of a genetic trail behind them.

This method gives us a lot of information that we weren't able to get before. It could be used to simplify environmental monitoring and possibly even help expand species records.

"Could the plant collections in museums be useful to understand how insect communities have changed?" asks the scientist. There is no real long-term data when it comes to insect decline studies.

The team is trying to find out what happened.

We rely on insects and other animals to help run our life support system, so hopefully these records are available. With massive environmental upheaval already underway, reading tea leaves can provide some vital information.

The research was published in biology letters.