Question

What percentage of puddled soil has higher water use efficiency over non puddled soil?

Answer 1

Puddling is a behavior in which insects, chiefly adult lepidopterans, drink from mud puddles, moist soil, fluids of vertebrate origin (urine, excrement, blood, sweat, and tears), carrion, and even seawater. Although broadly distributed geographically, puddling is particularly spectacular in the tropics where numerous individual butterflies representing multiple species gather to imbibe from damp river banks. The behavior generally is strongly sex biased, with typically only males participating. Puddling is associated with both the insects’ nutritional ecology and their reproductive biology. In certain moths, the behavior is herculean, as individuals imbibe several hundred times their body mass in a single drinking bout!