STORY: Researchers are revealing what happenswhen a raindrop lands on an insectusing water striders and super slow-motion video(Daren Watson, Florida Polytechnic University)"When striders are pushed into the water, we observe the formation of an air bubble around the body of the insect ... This air bubble prevents drowning. The water striders are also lightweight. The light weight of water striders allows for their passive transport along craters and jets.”The study is also giving insight into how microplastics move in waterWATSON: “Microplastics are smaller in size or can be of an equivalent size as the water striders, and would likely have a similar experience during rainfall. In some of our experiments, we replace water striders with floating particles and observed similar interactions when struck by raindrops.”