The most difficult thing I have ever had to write – Insects – A Very Short Introduction

The book!

I have written a lot of papers (more than 220 according to Web of Science) and quite a few books, two real ones (Leather et al., 1993; Leather & Bland, 1996) and eight edited volumes, over the last forty odd years. Up until now I thought the most exacting piece of writing I had ever done was my entry for the Biological Flora (Leather, 1996).  I mention this because it has a very similar feel to my most recent, most difficult piece of writing, Insects, A Very Short Introduction.

I did my PhD on the bird cherry aphid, Rhopalosiphum padi (Leather, 1980) during which I developed a real love for the bird cherry tree, Prunus padus. Just to illustrate this, my second son’s middle name is Tuomi – Finnish for bird cherry. Over the next decade or so I expanded my studies on to the different insects associated with it and also became quite adept at striking scions, grafting it and manipulating its phenology. I could (and still can), thanks to sampling bird cherry trees in Finland in the depths of winter, identify it in the dark by the smell of the bark 😊 In the mid-1980s, I jumped on to the species-area relationship bandwagon (Leather, 1985, 1986) and discovered the wonderful Biological Flora of the British Isles, hosted by the British Ecological Society. Armed with the arrogance of youth, and obviously at the time, not suffering from ‘imposter syndrome’, I contacted Arthur Willis (the then Editor of the series) and volunteered to write the entry for bird cherry. Pretty cheeky for an entomologist, but hey, both my parents were botanists and me and bird cherry were old pals! Arthur said yes and sent me the instructions for contributors which included all the headings and sub-sections required. It looked pretty straightforward to me; go down the headings, insert the information and write the narrative. Easy peasy lemon squeezy.  Or so I very naively thought ☹ I whipped through the headings, filled in the data that I had, wrote the accompanying narrative and posted it off to Arthur.  Job done! A few weeks later he returned my manuscript telling me that I was also expected to fill in the missing data gaps with data collected by me, not just leave them blank! 

Reality strikes!

So, over the next two years that is exactly what I did.  I checked out which mycorrhizae were associated with bird cherry, collected seed and calculated germination rates, sketched the different seedling stages, did NVC surveys at six different sites, characterised the growth structure of the tree and shrub forms and looked at responses to defoliation. I learnt a lot of botany! Arthur was an incredibly helpful editor and without his encouragement I would never have completed the entry.  I did, however, turn down Arthur’s suggestion that I do the entry for Prunus avium 😊

In 2018 I was contacted by Latha Menon, a Senior Commissioning Editor for OUP, who wanted to know if I would be interested in writing a book for their Very Short Introduction series, in this case, insects.  Having since 1990 grown older and picked up imposter syndrome on the way, I was initially a bit hesitant and asked if it would be possible to have a co-author.  Latha was somewhat lukewarm about this, saying that what the series was about was producing an extended essay (35 000 words) for a general audience reflecting the expertise and enthusiasm of the author.  I pondered about it and thought, well I’ve been a professional entomologist for more than forty years, and an amateur for my whole life, and taught entomology for more than thirty years, so how hard could it be to write 35 000 words about insects? I have also been blogging for what I have envisaged as a mixed audience since 2012, so surely within my capabilities?

I should have known better

It turns out that you can know too much about insects at the same time as you don’t know enough about them! First, I had to decide on a structure for the essay and also what particular aspects of entomology would leap off the page and grab my readers.  Much as I love aphids, other insects would have to feature.  The obvious place to start, I thought, would be to look at how our entomology course introduced the subject to new students, so Chapter 1, In the beginning was born. This was actually not that simple as I had to deal with the evolution of insects, their classification, their anatomy, a lot of their physiology, and also why they were and are so successful. Trying to make that not like a series of Wikipedia sections was not easy.

Now to me, one of the things that make insects so spectacular and evinces amazement in non-entomologists, is how good they are at reproducing themselves, hey presto, Chapter 2, Prolific procreators and the need to discuss sexual selection, mating behaviour, courtship, lekking and much more. I had originally planned to cover host selection and life history strategies in this chapter, but found that it didn’t sit very well in that context.

Instead, I moved on to Chapter 3, On the move, which began with the evolution of flight, much, of which, despite my decades of experience, was quite a revelation to me. From flight I moved onto host selection, and the physiology and ecology of specialist and generalist feeding. These first three chapters were the most difficult to write, bearing in mind that my readers need to understand the basics of how insects work to fully grasp the wonder of what insects are actually achieving. I had to rewrite these first chapters three times before my Commissioning Editor, my non-entomologist lay-reader (my wife, a humanities graduate), a botanist colleague and an entomological colleague, were happy with them.

Those chapters behind me, I now felt it was time to move on to those aspects of entomology that had super wow factor, those facts that would make my readers exclaim things like “I didn’t know that” and encourage them to pass them on to their friends and relatives. Heavily influenced by my childhood love of social insects, Chapter 4, Living together, appeared on the scene. As well as talking about the well-known bees, ants and termites, it also gave me the chance to discuss lesser known examples such as dung beetles, social bugs, insect symbionts, insect-plant interactions, and yes, of course, aphids get more than a passing mention😊

The next three chapters are a bit niche, but gave me the chance to launch Chapter 5, Aquatic Insects, into the mix and talk about the importance of freshwater insects and even more excitingly, wax lyrical about the little known truly marine Ocean Skaters, which I first came across on a work trip to Mauritius in the mid-1990s. Judging by what I see on social media platforms, non-entomologists are, in the English vernacular, totally gob-smacked by how insects can pretend to be something else, so this made Chapter 6, Crypsis, mimicry and blatant advertising, an obvious heading.  I had a lot of fun with this, but was slightly hampered by the restriction placed by OUP on how many illustrations I was allowed to include, and also sadly not being allowed colour.

To me, the ability of insects to live in very inhospitable conditions, from deserts, to ice caves, to mountain tops and to survive arctic winters and other extreme weather conditions without the benefit of fur coats and cold baths, made Chapter 7, Against the odds, a natural.

I have, over the years, been amazed by how limited many people’s appreciation of the positive economic, social, artistic and health benefits of insects to the human world are (Leather, 2015), hence Chapter 8, The good, the bad and the ugly.  Here I dealt with pests, disease vectors, biological control, maggot therapy, pollinators, the role of insects as ecosystem engineers, as waste-disposal specialists and as recyclers.

I began my book by describing the diversity and ubiquity of insects. I discussed their origins and marveled at the ways in which insects have adapted to a wide range of environments and the roles that they play in maintaining ecosystem health. Given that for at least the last twenty years or so, entomologists and ecologists have been warning about the dangers of losing species I felt it fitting to end it by discussing the harm that we are doing to insects and the planet that we, and they, inhabit, and ways in which we might act to halt or reverse our course, if it is not already too late.  I finished with a warning, and the hope that we are not too late to stem disaster, Chapter 9, Ecological Armageddon—insects in decline?

It was, primarily due to the fact that at times, for every word I took out, I seemed to add another ten, both one of the most frustrating but also satisfying pieces of writing that I have ever done. I just hope that when it hits the shops, my readers will find as much to enjoy as I have since I first came across insects just over sixty years ago.

References

Leather, S.R. (1980) Aspects of the Ecology of the Bird Cherry-Oat Aphid, Rhopalosiphum padi L., PhD Thesis University of East Anglia, Norwich.

Leather, S.R. (1985) Does the bird cherry have its ‘fair share’ of insect pests? An appraisal of the species-area relationships of the phytophagous insects associated with British Prunus species. Ecological Entomology, 10, 43-56.

Leather, S.R. (1986) Insect species richness of the British Rosaceae: the importance of hostrange, plant architecture, age of establishment, taxonomic isolation and species-area relationships. Journal of Animal Ecology, 55, 841-860.

Leather, S.R. (1996) Biological flora of the British Isles Prunus padus L. Journal of Ecology, 84, 125-132.

Leather, S.R. (2015) Influential entomology: a short review of the scientific, societal, economic and educational services provided by entomology. Ecological Entomology, 40 (Suppl. 1), 36-44.

Leather, S.R. & Bland, K.P. (1999) Insects on Cherry Trees, Richmond Publishing Co, Ltd, Slough.

Leather, S.R., Walters, K.F.A. & Bale, J.S. (1993) The Ecology of Insect Overwintering, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.

Professor Emeritus – the final instar?

Six years ago, I celebrated my 60^th birthday by writing a light hearted survey of my life to then under the title of The Seven Ages of an Entomologist, in which I likened each stage of my career to  an insect life cycle, from egg hatch through to adulthood, with full Professor being the seventh and final stage.  I have from my detailed field observations, realised that there is a rare super-imago stage, the Emeritus Professor 🙂

I unofficially (my letter of appointment didn’t arrive until mid-June) entered this stage on April 1^st this year (2021), the occasion of which I had announced via Twitter on March 31^st  when I tweeted

“Today is my last day as a salaried academic as I officially ‘retire’ – tomorrow (yes April 1st – don’t snigger) I officially join the ranks of the old fogey/greybeards and become Professor Emeritus – I must admit I have mixed feelings about this stage of my academic career”

A number of my colleagues and academic friends elsewhere, on achieving Emeritus status, pretty much continue as before, teaching, researching and writing papers and coming into the office almost every day. As a PhD student, at the University of East Anglia, the sight of Professor Emeritus Jack Kitching, then in his seventies, striding across the grass from the lake with a bucket of water, was a familiar sight. My former colleague, Graham Matthews at Imperial College, was still, aged 80, a regular visitor to his office and my PhD supervisor, Tony Dixon, now 84, is still writing papers, although mainly from his home office. 

What are these mixed feelings of which I wrote? Now I may be an exception among academics of my generation, but almost all my social life, such as it is, has with the exception of my best friend from school*, and old school and undergraduate university friends on Facebook, come about through my work.  There was a phase when our children were at school, and my wife and I were stalwarts of the PTA, that I attended Quiz Nights and other fundraising activities, but that is now long in the past and my non-academic socialising is now interactions with our neighbours, and until lockdown, social events run by the band of which my wife is the Manager. I am thus one of those sad people whose work and other life are pretty much inextricably linked. The prospect of leaving my academic setting was not something I viewed with any degree of sanguinity, despite the fact that originally our retirement plan was to spend our sunset years basking in the sun of the Pyrénées-Orientales cosily ensconced in our French house with a mountain view and easy access to the local wines and food and a suitably equipped study- cum- library in which to write all the books that I have had planned for years, but not yet had the time to write.

The aspect of retirement that worried me most was the loss of daily contact with students, (unlike a lot of research active academics, I really enjoy teaching) and the chance to chat with colleagues of all disciplines at coffee time.  The Harper Adams coffee culture, prior to the pandemic, was second to none. These two factors weighed very heavily against the prospect of gently pickling myself in France 🙂

Then along came two life changing events, the lunacy of Brexit which threw a spanner in the works regarding our retirement plans and oesophageal cancer which was an even bigger problem. On top of all this, add Covid and lockdown!  The two latter events made a huge change to my working life, in that I was physically isolated from my campus office, colleagues and students. Luckily, I am a bit of an introvert so the solitude was not too big a problem, country walks and plenty to read have kept me sane (discounting the post-operative paranoia) over the past year and our coffee mornings via Teams with the Entogroup have been a fairly good surrogate for keeping in touch with gossip and work, although virtual reality will never, in my opinion, be as good as the real thing, but it has been a help. It has also made me more able to pull away from the campus than if I had been working full-time on site, as I have no doubt that I would have found the physical and psychological separation much more difficult. Frankly, I think I would have been terrified. As it is I am just apprehensive. As Emeritus I will still get the opportunity to teach, but can now avoid all the bits I dislike about the job, administration and marking 🙂  I will also have more time to write up some of the back-log of papers that have been sitting patiently on my desk; some for more than twenty years.  More importantly, and hopefully, more financially rewarding, I hope to get all the books I have had planned for the last thirty years, finally written! I am very grateful to the University for granting me this honour and opportunity.

Looking back at the last nine years I have been Professor of Entomology at Harper Adams University I think it is apposite to quote from my 60^th birthday post in which I wrote

“My hope is that in five years time when I become a retired Professor and my hair and beard colour are the same, that entomology will be taught at more than one university in the UK and not just at postgraduate level.”

I am very pleased to point out that there are now three universities in the UK that run postgraduate courses in entomology (none as good as ours of course) and Harper Adams University now offers a very successful entomology undergraduate degree.

Another quote from the same post “A small point of personal satisfaction, is that, despite my elevation, I still do not own a suit “.  Guess what, I still don’t 🙂

Professor not-emeritus in lockdown, before chemotherapy and Professor Emeritus, complete with post-chemotherapy hair growth.

Post script

Somewhat disconcertingly I found on attempting to log on to my email and other accounts after the end of my last working day as a salaried employee, I found that all my accounts had been closed down. Our HR Department obviously have no idea how academia works. It would seem that in HR World, once you retire, you no longer exist. As you can imagine this caused a certain amount of panic on my part. Luckily after contacting my Head of Department via my Google account, I was readmitted to the system by mid-morning the following day, and to my great relief found that all my files were intact.

*a friendship which started in 1968

Pick & Mix 59 – countryside and colonialism, climate change, urban greening, native trees, natural history and public rights of way

Corinne Fowler on colonialism’s imprint on the British countryside.

I’m a climate scientist – here’s three key things I have learned over a year of COVID

Ancient leaves preserved under a mile of Greenland’s ice – and lost in a freezer for years – hold lessons about climate change

Why entomologists kill – understanding the need for collections

In case of emergency — break glass – Richard Jones on the trials and tribulations of trying to copy a bank note 🙂

Torino – showing the world how to make a green city

Perfectly explains why I prefer real books to e-books – The Multisensory Experience of Handling and Reading Books

Plant native, save insects – also in the UK it will benefit birds as well (if you want a copy email me)

Time to make nature studies a compulsory school subject – before it’s too late – and here is a blog post by me about the same subject from last year

Britain’s ancient footpaths could soon be lost forever, and here is a blog post by me about the same subject written a few weeks earlier – ahead of the curve that’s me 🙂

Clasped like tiny gold jewels… Miss Benson’s Beetle, a gem of a book

“Inside the envelope, a black-and-white photograph. It showed two women. An entomologist and her assistant. The entomologist stood right in the centre, a young woman with a big smile on her face, her hand stretched out to reach the camera…. Freya moved her magnifying glass to the assistant. She was much older. Too old, really, to be in the field.”

I always find writing reviews of fiction a bit fraught as I am very conscious, that for some, including me, spoilers are the work of the Devil 🙂

My mission then, is to do my best to convey the feel of the book without giving away too much of the plot. Let me begin by saying that this is a fantastic book and I was very honoured to be involved, albeit in a minor way, as one of the entomologists that Rachel consulted before she embarked on her literary adventure.  Chick lit is defined as works of heroine-centred narratives that focus on the trials and tribulations of their individual protagonists, and is, more often than not, used as a dismissive and derogatory term. Yes, this book is heroine-centred, and yes it focuses on the trials and tribulations of Miss Benson and her somewhat erratically (and that is putting it mildly), behaved travelling companion, Enid Pretty. Nevertheless, let me assure you, this is not chick lit, this is a novel of substance, but written in a very approachable and accessible style.

The backbone of this story, and given that beetles are invertebrates, this is possibly not the best term to use, but as chitinous exo-skeleton doesn’t really do the job, I will stick with the vertebrate reference, is the quest for a possibly mythical golden beetle. Fear not non-entomologists, this is not an entomological textbook, filled with abstruse terms and incomprehensible minutiae. It is the very opposite. It is many things; it is a thriller, a love-story, a tragedy, a mystery, a tale of frustrated ambition, a window into the past and present, and above all, a story of fulfilment.

Not everything is as it seems as you will find when you reach the passage I quoted at the beginning of this review. Set mainly in 1950, but moving from before the Great War until the early 1980s this book will transport you on an emotional roller-coaster of a ride from London to New Caledonia, accompanied by a sinister stalker, a couple of unexpected stops along the way and some immensely amusing pen-portraits which really capture the period.

In summary, an unexpected friendship, murder, mystery, burglaries, things that go bump in the night, poignant, funny, and to cap it all, not all is what it seems at first sight.  As an entomologist, I must also compliment Rachel on how she has managed to capture the entomological aspects of the story and in particular, the passion that we feel for our discipline and our favourite species.

A must read for all, and, in my opinion, Rachel’s best book to date.

Rachel Joyce (2020) Miss Benson’s Beetle, Doubleday, ISBN 978-0-8575-2198- 9 £16.9:9

Pick & Mix 50 – conservation, misogyny, media misinformation, citizen science, healthy gardens and insect-inspired eye make-up

“Conservation should indeed be a global priority. But understanding of the complexity and colonial roots of this problem and the shocking double standards that exist, is vital” Very important article by conservation scientist Tarsh Thakaekara

Adam Hart and colleagues on the harm that celebrities and media misinformation are doing to conservation

Misogyny alive and well in the world of shark conservation – time for a change of attitude

Top tips on keeping your plants and gardens healthy

Interesting Open Access article on urban conservation

Fantastic essay about Rosalind Franklin by Matthew Cobb (author of The Brain and Very Short Introduction to Smell)

Sophie Yeo asks ‘Does citizen science make you happier?”

Insect inspired eye make-up

The benefit of an insect collection, said Floyd Shockley, the insect collection manager at the Smithsonian Natural History Museum, is that “a dead specimen, if properly preserved, can be there forever.” A 153-year-old insect collection is being used to solve modern problems.

Another insightful blog post from Manu Saunders about the insect apocalypse stories and the data  behind them

 

Should entomologists change their name to insectologists?

In case you are wondering, this is not a totally tongue in cheek post. Over the years it has become very clear to me, that many people, even those with degrees, have no idea what an entomologist is. On being told that I am an entomologist, most people look blankly at me, and pass on rapidly to another topic. Despite the importance of the subject, the term entomology is not very widely known.  Sadly, to those of us who study insects, this is no longer hugely surprising.  More surprising though, is how few of those people then ask me what an entomologist is. I haven’t asked any ornithologists, botanists, zoologists, my paediatrics daughter, or my consultant gynaecologist brother if they suffer similar responses on being asked their occupations, but I suspect that they suffer from far fewer blank looks than I do.

So, what can we do about this lamentable state of affairs?  I, and other entomologists have long lamented the lack of knowledge and interest in these, the most important, and to me, most fascinating members of the animal world, shown by the majority of humans. What is it about entomology that makes it such a niche subject?

All is not lost. When I do get the chance to enlighten those that ask, and tell them that entomologists study insects, I am relieved to find that they do know what they (insects) are, even if they do respond, with “oh bugs, that’s what I thought”, which is at least preferable to “creepy crawlies” which is another common response. So are we too elitist, too proud of our discipline to give it a more accessible name? Ornithologists don’t, as far as I know, call themselves birdologists, and herpetologists don’t need to go around describing themselves as frogologists, snakeologists or whateverologists?  They don’t have to, they live in a world surrounded by the constant stream of vertebrate propaganda coming from the biased charismatic mega-fauna, backbone dominated world we live in. (I’m not bitter, honest).

Going back to my question about elitism in our discipline.  Our societies worldwide are known as entomological societies, some such as the one I have been a proud Fellow since 1977, are even preceded by the word Royal, and the Royal Entomological Society of London is not alone, there is also the Royal Belgian Entomological Society :-). What about the journals that entomological societies produce and those in which entomologists publish?  As you might expect the majority of the titles contain the word entomology but not exclusively.  The two biggest entomological societies, The Royal Entomological Society (RES) and the Entomological Society of America (ESA), produce six and eight journals respectively in addition to their newsletters and handbooks.  Of the six RES journals, two use insect instead of entomology, Insect Conservation & Diversity and Insect Molecular Biology. Similarly the ESA have two insect named journals, Journal of Insect Science, Insect Systematics and Diversity, and also two that eschew mention of both entomology and insects, Journal of Integrated Pest Management, and Arthropod Management Tests. The International Union for the Study of Social Insects, not technically a society, produces the well-known and highly respected journal, Insectes Sociaux.

Outside the world of learned entomological societies there are a handful of entomological journals that use insect instead of entomology, namely, Journal of Insect Conservation, Journal of Insect Physiology, Insects and Insect Science, three of which I have published in (Cameron & Leather, 2012; Oliver et al., 2012, Cooper et al., 2014). There is also of course, The Bulletin of Insectology, in which I have also published (Benelli et al, 2015).

Entomology is obviously not a sacred term, and in the interests of getting more people interested in the wonderful world of insects and letting them know what it is we do, we should perhaps, be less precious about being entomologists, and become insectologists when appropriate.  That said, I don’t think I will ever be able to bring myself to say that I am a bugologist or creepycrawlyologist, but I I could certainly live with being an insectologist now and then.

 

References

Benelli, M., Leather, S.R., Francati, S., Marchetti, E. & Dindo, M.L. (2015) Effect of two temperatures on biological traits and susceptibility to a pyrethroid insecticide in an exotic and native coccinellid species. Bulletin of Insectology, 69, 23-29.

Cameron, K.H. & Leather, S.R. (2012) Heathland management effects on carabid beetle communities: the relationship between bare ground patch size and carabid  biodiversity. Journal of Insect Conservation, 16, 523-535.

Cooper, L.C., Desjonqueres, C. & Leather, S.R. (2014) Cannibalism in the pea aphid, Acyrthosiphon pisum. Insect Science, 21, 750-758.

Oliver, T.H., Leather, S.R. & Cook, J.M. (2012) Ant larval demand reduces aphid colony growth rates in an ant-aphid interaction. Insects, 3, 120-130.

Buzzing with invention and intrigue – The Bees by Laline Paull

Laline Paulll, The Bees, Harper Collins (2014) ISBN 978-0-00-755774-5

Having suffered the trauma of watching Antz and the Bee Movie, I’m always a tad reluctant to embark on books that feature insects as their main protagonists. Maya Leonard’s Beetle Boy trilogy, which I thoroughly enjoyed, is different, as the insects play a supporting role.  It is probably this prejudice that has allowed this wonderful book to have been unread by me for six long years 🙂

I can’t remember who recommended this book, but I’m glad I took them up on it.  Despite the glowing recommendation and the numerous blurbs inside and out (after all Stephen Heard has recently revealed the truth about book blurbs) I began reading Laline Paull’s debut novel with some trepidation. I was pleasantly surprised, despite the inevitable anthropomorphisation of the heroine*, (I don’t think the novel would have worked without it), I engaged wholeheartedly with the story.

I was a bit dubious at first about the kin group theme, the heroine is a Flora (717 to be exact), and there are Teasels, Clovers and the evil Sages, as I, erroneously as it turned out, had this idea that all the members of a hive were full sisters.  I had, however, misremembered, honey bee queens, unlike many other Hymenoptera, are no strangers to multiple mating**(polyandry), having, in fact, the highest levels of this trait of all the social insects (Strassman, 2001). Biologically, the Queen having access to multiple sperm-donors is highly advantageous, as when disease strikes, as it does in the novel, not all the inhabitants of the colony are equally vulnerable (Tarpy, 2003). British elms would not have been all but exterminated by Dutch Elm Disease, if they had not all been members of a single clone.

The other characteristic of bees that some might feel that Laline Paull plays a little fast and loose with is temporal polyethism (age based division of labour). I had slight misgivings about the rigidity of the division of labour within the hive. It has long been known that honeybee workers exhibit temporal polyethism (age-based division of labour) (Pérez, 1889). Young workers perform brood-nest associated tasks such as brood-cell cleaning and larval feeding, graduating on to food processing, nest construction, and guarding and finally as they enter old age, become foragers (Seeley and Kolmes 1991). Flora 717 does indeed go through these phases, but the rest of her kin group seem to be sanitation workers throughout their lives and the scheming Sage priestesses seem to have no other function than to spread their mantra of “Accept, Obey, Serve” and to direct the action of the sinister police bees. In case you think that police bees are a bit too detached from reality, worker bees do ‘police’ other workers when it comes to ‘unauthorised’ egg laying (Ratnieks & Visscher, 1989). Although it has been shown that different genotypes of bees within a hive do show some variation in the timing of their move from one task to another (Siegel et al., 2013), there is, as far, as I can find, no evidence of genotypes that remain fixed in one job their whole lives.

I guess the biggest issue, without giving the climax of the story away, is the production of a Queen from an egg laid by a worker bee. Worker bees can, and do lay unfertilised eggs, but, with one exception, they are invariably males.  Workers of the Cape honeybees (Apis mellifera capensis), however, can produce female eggs parthenogenetically (Hepburn, 1994), a phenomenon known as thelytoky. If fed the right food during the first 72 hours of their larval life, these eggs, could in theory, develop into Queens, (Pérez, 1889). Although the story is not set in South Africa, I am willing to give this a pass and assume that one of the drones that impregnated the Queen of Flora’s hive was a Cape honeybee.

The many issues facing honeybees are brought to life in this dramatic and believable story.  Experience the effects of pesticides, pollution and ‘phone masts on our heroine and her hive mates at first hand.  Cower as the wasps attack, and when a starving mouse gains entry to the hive in mid-winter, wince as the surplus drones are disposed of by the workers and cheer as our heroine saves the day.  This is a gripping story, and despite my reservations about the ‘hive mind’ Laline has taken the advice of her entomological advisors to heart and made a hugely successful foray into depicting the life style and ecology of the honeybee.

Definitely worth reading, a tour de force.

 

References

Hepburn, H.R. (1994) Reproductive cycling and hierarchical competition in Cape honeybees, Apis mellifera capensis Esch. Apidologie, 25, 38-48.

Pérez J. (1889) Les Abeilles. Paris, France: Hachette et Cie.

Ratnieks, F.L.W. & Visscher, P.K. (1989) Worker policing in the honeybee. Nature, 342, 796-797.

Seeley, T.D. & Kolmes, S.A. (1991) Age polyethism for hive duties in honey bees — illusion or reality? Ethology, 87, 284-297.

Siegel, A. J., Fondrk, M. K., Amdam, G. V., & Page, R. E., Jr (2013). In-hive patterns of temporal polyethism in strains of honey bees (Apis mellifera) with distinct genetic backgrounds. Behavioral Ecology and Sociobiology, 67, 1623–1632.

Strassmann, J. E. (2001) The rarity of multiple mating by females in the social Hymenoptera. Insectes Sociaux, 48, 1–13.

Tarpy, D.R. (2003) Genetic diversity within honeybee colonies prevents severe infections and promotes colony growth. Proceedings of the Royal Society B, 270, 99-103.

*Unlike makers of The Bee Movie, Laline knows what sex worker bees are 🙂

** Note that I did not use the word promiscuous; promiscuity is a human trait, not an insect one.

Pick & Mix 48 – wildflowers, sinistral snails, slaves, Charles Dickens, medieval insect lore, conservation and teaching in a virtual world

Rob Yorke on insects

On the importance of ‘real’ wildflowers and the rise of plant blindness

Do you remember Jeremy the left-handed snail?  Sadly, he is now no longer with us but he has been immortalised in print 🙂 See the published paper here.

Sickening and sobering visualisation of the slave trade 😦

Interesting analysis of some of Charles Dickens’ characters

Insects and other arthropods in medieval manuscripts – some remarkable illustrations

The role of arthropods in medieval medicine

One, two, more or less? How many metres apart will keep us safe?

Teaching tips for a virtual world

If you are interested in UK nature and conservation, then this is an interesting on-line news round-up

Natural History learning should be compulsory for all, not just an option for a niche few

One of the few benefits of the Covid-19 pandemic is that I have been able to spend a lot more time outdoors roaming the country lanes around my lockdown prison*.  Prior to my move to Harper Adams University, I had, from 1992-2012, spent two days a week doing fieldwork at Silwood Park. When I moved  from there to Harper Adams, I resisted the temptation to set up yet another long-term field study, and decided to concentrate (not very successfully) on analysing my data backlog and getting the MSc courses well and truly established at their new location. At the time I hadn’t realised how much I had benefited, physically and mentally, from my Silwood transects until I started my lunchtime lockdown treks. I have over the past eleven weeks, added four new aphid species to my personal list, plus a couple of beetles (including one notable species), counted butterflies, seen a hare, reacquainted myself with lots of grasses and herbaceous plants, talked to trees, fumbled a few fungal identifications, and even taken a passing interest in birds :-).  I mention all this because I am a great believer in fieldwork and the benefits that accrue in terms of ideas if you keep your eyes open to all the other things that are happening around your study organisms. Given the vast number of insect species and the close relationships most of them have with plants, it behoves a field entomologist to have more than a passing interest in natural history.

This past week has seen a flurry of interest in the study of natural history in the UK. One of the national exam boards (OCR), after a lot of lobbying from the author Mary Colwell and organisations such as the UK Plant Science Federation, has set out a consultation document about the launch of a new GCSE** qualification in Natural History. As someone who has been bemoaning the lack of natural history training at all levels for many years, this, on the face of it, seems a great idea.

Learning the basics

This is their proposed statement on the purpose of studying Natural History: (so lack of appropriate punctuation is not due to me)

“Natural history offers a unique opportunity to observe and engage with the natural world to develop a deeper understanding of the flora and fauna (life on Earth) within it. It is a study of how the natural world has been shaped and has evolved as well as how humans (as part of that natural world) influence, conserve and protect it. It is vital that we continue to develop our understanding of the natural world in order to safeguard the future.

To fully appreciate the complexities of the natural world it is important to study it closely and interact with it through field research and measurement. Natural history provides opportunities to develop skills out in the field as well as in a classroom and/or laboratory. Studying natural history makes an important contribution to understanding the relationship between the natural world and culture, policy decisions, scientific research and technology.

Study of science, geography, history and the arts at key stages 3 and 4 provides a variety of complementary skills and knowledge which support the study of Natural history. This subject supports the development of unique skills and knowledge which give a sharper focus and depth to the complexities of the natural world. The progression pathway for this subject at key stage 5 and beyond could be scientific, geographical, environmental, ecological or natural history itself.”

 

This is all very laudable and something I think that all of us interested in natural history would support wholeheartedly.  In the UK, the problem is particularly acute and is something that has been recognised for some time (Leather & Quicke, 2010).  Natural history training at all levels has been appalling over the last couple of decades, and has been aided and abetted by the way in which research councils have awarded funding over that period (Clark & May, 2002; Leather, 2009, 2013).  This, and the typical media coverage, see us living in a world where ecology and conservation, is largely perceived to be vertebrate biased, and insects, with the exception of honeybees, portrayed as the enemies of humankind.

Typical reporting of the biodiversity crisis in the UK

Vertebrate bias not just confined to the UK

A very natural (and to me fascinating) phenomenon provoking hysterical reactions on Twitter. Most of the replies were similar to these “Just RUN,  RUN, Ew, Look for a spaceship – it’s an alien, we’re doomed, we’re all doomed”

Yet another harmless insect vilified

This is a problem and something one would hope that a pre-university qualification in natural history would seek to address.  Now, although I very much like and support the idea of a secondary school qualification in Natural History, I can see a couple of problems looming ahead.  First,  I may be biased, but looking at how the macro-species are represented globally, one would justifiably expect the study of natural history to focus on plants, insects and other invertebrates.

Estimated number of species globally within the macro-world (invertebrates other than insects number approximately 300 000 species).

Where are the invertebrates? Surely rather than the rise of the mammals, it should be mammals gain a precarious claw hold?  The invertebrates were, and continue to be the dominant animal life from on Earth, but don’t get a mention.  Then in another part of the consultation document, under topics to be considered, we see yet another anti plant and insect bias creeping in and a pro-vertebrate slant.

• Effects of introducing non-native species (e.g. harlequin ladybirds, Rhododendron)
• Species reintroduction (e.g. wolves, beavers, red kites)

There are lots of vertebrate non-native species that could be named (Eatherley, 2019) and many notable insect reintroductions (e.g. Andersen, 2016)..but where are they?

Despite the fact that the much respected book series The New Naturalist,and the equally respected journal, The American Naturalist, proudly include the word naturalist in their titles, sometime in the last thirty years or so, natural history and naturalist became words that were regarded with some scorn and suspicion within the hallowed halls of academia. Whereas in the past, to be an ecologist necessitated an understanding and knowledge of the living world (Travis, 2020), the ability to produce mathematical models and run complex statistical analyses became the route to tenure and laboratories chock a block with postdocs and PhD students.  In universities, computers and molecular biology labs replaced plant and animal based practical classes. Ecology field courses based around insect, and plant identification disappeared, to reappear rebadged as conservation courses and moved to exotic climes with a focus on the large and easily seen furry, feathered and scaled vertebrates. (OK, I’m being a bit hyperbolic here but you know what I mean; and this is a true story, when I was at Imperial College and it was very obvious that we were running out of entomologists to teach the subject, my Head of Department on me drawing this to his attention, suggested that we could do more modelling).  At the same time, biology teaching in secondary schools was also changing in scope, moving away from the outdoors and whole organisms, to molecules, genetics and humans.  The age of plant blindness, entomyopia, entoalexia and nature deficit disorder (Louw, 2005) was well and truly established by the beginning of the 21^st Century.

This brings me to my biggest concern.  Insects and plants dominate the natural world, but, as we know, entomologists and botanists are in very short supply. In the UK, Botany and Zoology departments have mostly been subsumed into BioScience and Life Sciences departments to the detriment of whole organism teaching. There are no Botany Departments per se, and in the few remaining Zoology Departments, entomologists, make up at the most, half of the tenured staff, so where are the teachers going to come from?

Who will teach Natural History?

 

Finally, even if we find the teachers and the curriculum is appropriately balanced to reflect the natural world, unless we make it compulsory to all, as is the case with English and Mathematics, it will only ever remain a niche subject taken by relatively few students.  Consequently, elephant hawk moth caterpillars will continue to be beaten to death by suburban parents afraid of snakes, the press will continue to vilify harmless wood wasps, bumbling beautiful cockchafers will be swatted to death and hoverflies squashed by rolled up newspapers for no good reason.

 

References

Andersen, A. , Simcox, D.J., Thomas, J.A. & Nash, D.R. (2016) Assessing reintroduction schemes by comparing genetic diversity of reintroduced and source populations: A case study of the globally threatened large blue butterfly (Maculinea arion). Biological Conservation, 175, 34-41.

Clark, J.A. & May, R.M. (2002) Taxonomic bias in conservation research. Science, 297, 191-192.

Eatherley, D. (2019) Invasive Aliens, William Collins, London.

Leather, S.R. (2009) Taxonomic chauvinism threatens the future of entomology. Biologist, 56, 10-13.

Leather, S.R. (2013) Institutional vertebratism hampers insect conservation generally; not just saproxylic beetle conservation. Animal Conservation, 16, 379-380.

Leather, S.R. & Quicke, D.L.J. (2010) Do shifting baselines in natural history knowledge threaten the environment? Environmentalist, 30, 1-2.

Louw, R. (2005)  Last Child in the Woods, Atlantic Books, London.

Purvis, A. (2020) A single apex target for biodiversity would be bad news for both nature and people. Nature Ecology & Evolution, 4, 768-769.

Travis, J. (2020) Where is natural history in ecological, evolutionary and behavioral science?  The American Naturalist, 196,

 

*my wife and I managed to end up being lock-downed 250 km apart 😦

**Non UK residents see here for an explanation

If I hadn’t become an entomologist, what would I have become? The scientific road not taken

A couple of days ago Jeremy Fox over at Dynamic Ecology posted a what if blog asking where, knowing what you now know, you might see yourself in an alternative world. To be clear, I have absolutely no regrets choosing entomology as a subject, and teaching and research as a career. I did, however, and still do, have some allied interests.

As I have mentioned before, I became interested in insects and their antics from a very early age, but I was also, from an equally early age a voracious reader, devouring books at a prodigious rate. I wasn’t fussy about genres, although I particularly enjoyed those with a historical flavour, Treasure Island, Ivanhoe,  Lorna Doone, Biggles, Hornblower, and the works  of  H.G. Wells, Rudyard Kipling, Conan Doyle, not just Sherlock Holmes, but also Sir Nigel and The White Company* to name but a few.  I was also interested in Roman history, in fact I still am, and love reading detective fiction set in those times especially Lindsey Davis’s Falco novels. I come from a long line of civil engineers and from them seem to have inherited an interest in digging holes and making dams, and this, coupled with my interest in history, did make me fleetingly consider archaeology as a possible career. But it wasn’t to be, and in later years this turned into human archaeology of a sort, genealogy :-).  This is probably one of the reasons why I find Edward Rutherford’s sweeping historical novels with their detailed family trees and thousand year time spans so fascinating.

As a teenager, before I was totally consumed by the flame of entomology, I fleetingly contemplated a possible career in medicine but at the same time really got into human origins and so palaeontology seemed a possible way to go. I was reminded of this a few years ago, when I was the external examiner for the Zoology degree at University College Dublin, but again it was not to be, and I ended up, without regrets, as an entomologist.

What I have discovered over the years is that I still love history, I love teaching and I love a good mystery.  I have always wanted to know how things came to be, and, as my students will testify, my lectures always have a bit of history in them, nuggets about the early entomologists and ecologists and how the sub-disciplines arose as well as personal stories of how papers and lecturers inspired me.  In some ways, this is a bit like archaeology as I quite often have to do a lot of digging and delving into the past, when, for example I am chasing down an elusive reference.

So, in answer to the question posed by Jeremy Fox, I would, if I hadn’t become an entomologist, love to have been an academic specialising in the history of science 🙂

*

If you haven’t read these but have read S M Stirling’s Change novels you won’t have realised that some of the characters in the Conan Doyle books appear to have jumped from the past into the future 🙂