The Verrall Supper 2017 – entomologists eating, drinking and getting very merry

The Rembrandt Hotel in South Kensington and the first Wednesday of March mean only one thing to many UK entomologists – the Verrall Supper. I have written about the Verrall Supper previously on more than one occasion, so this will, once again, be largely a photographic record.  This year the first Wednesday of March was March 1^st and this seemed to have caught a few Verrallers by surprise.  Consequently, numbers were slightly down compared with last year’s record, but the number of non-attending Verrallers paying to retain their membership was at an all-time high.  One notable absence was the former Verrall Secretary, Helmut van Emden who due to mobility problems was unable to attend, only the second one that he has missed in 50 years!

On a very sad note, we reported the deaths of two long-time members of the Association, Gerry Tremewan (long time editor of The Entomologist and the Entomologist’s Gazette, and Bernard Skinner, author of that magnificent book,  Moths of the British Isles.

More positively, we were slightly up on female entomologist this year, 30% compared with last year’s 29%.  There is still much progress to be made, but we have seen a year on year increase now for the last four years so, perhaps one day we will hit that magic 50:50 mark.

Our entomologist in Holy Orders, the Reverend Dr David Agassiz, was unable to attend this year, so instead of the usual entomological grace, I performed a humanist blessing, which seemed to meet with satisfaction from all sides.  I reproduce it here if anyone feels like using it at a similar occasion.

As we come together at this special time, let us pause a moment to appreciate the opportunity for good company and to thank all those past and present whose efforts have made this event possible. As we go through life, the most important thing that we can collect is good memories.  Thank you for all being here today to share this meal as a treasured part of this collection.

And now to let the pictures tell the story.

Chris Lyal and Clive Farrell of the Entomological Club – “helping” at the registration desk

Three very illustrious (or should that be shiny) entomologists – Jeremy Thomas, Charles Godfray and Dick Vane-Wright

Richard Harrington and the winner of the Van Emden Bursary, PhD student Ellen Moss

Two of the more venerable Verrallers – Trevor Lewis and Marion Gratwick

Many Verrallers are young and quite a few are female 🙂

Adriana De Palma making a fuss about Erica McAlister’s new book 🙂

Some older entomologists enjoying the food and drink

The younger entomologists also had excellent appetites

The President of the Royal Entomological Society, Mike Hassell, wishes you all good health and happiness

Beards still feature among the younger end of the male Verrallers, although sadly it is no longer mandatory 🙂

And a bit of entomological bling to bring the show to an end 🙂

Many thanks to all who attended and I hope to see you all again next year, plus many new faces.

 

 

Ten papers that shook my world – Lewis (1969) – the importance of (h)edges for natural biological control

In 1969, Trevor Lewis, of what was then the Rothamsted Research Station (now Rothamsted Research), published two landmark papers (Lewis 1969ab). These papers, in which he described the importance of hedges as habitats for insects (Lewis, 1969a) and in acting as possible sources of natural enemies able to colonise nearby fields (Lewis, 1969b) were to have a profound effect on me and generations of applied entomologists and pest mangers to the present day.

In 1976 the UK experienced what is now recognised as the warmest year of the 20^th Century.  It was also the year that I started my final year as an undergraduate.  Before entering our final year we had to do a research placement or project.   I opted to do my project at home, I was making very good money as a temporary postman and as I usually finished my round by 10 am, I had plenty of time during the rest of the day to get to grips with my project.  I had come across the Lewis papers in lectures and thought that it would be interesting to do a similar study; given the weather I was also keen to spend as much time outside as possible 🙂 My Uncle James owned a local farm and was happy for me to sample some of his hawthorn hedges, so sampling hawthorn hedges was what I did during July and August of the glorious summer.

The intrepid student entomologist; trusty bike, clipboard and a copy of Chinery*. Note the wellington boots despite the heat 🙂

The hedges in question – three types of management

As I mentioned earlier, 1976 was the warmest year on record at the time, and I see from my report that during August I was recording temperatures in excess of 25^oC, even in the hedge bottoms.

The report

What is interesting is that although 1976 was one of the famous ladybird outbreak years (in fact last week I was interviewed by the BBC about my memories of that very same event) I didn’t record more than a handful of ladybirds in my surveys.  Perhaps inland Yorkshire just wasn’t attractive enough 🙂

Overall my results showed that over-clipping resulted in more crop pests being present and that hedges with less clipping supported a greater diversity of insect life than the more managed ones, very similar to results being reported today (e.g Amy et al., 2015).

Sadly, although Lewis’s two 1969 papers and to a certain extent his earlier paper in a much harder to access source (Lewis, 1964), led on to the concept of conservation headlands (Sotherton et al., 1989) and ‘crop islands’ (Thomas et al., 1991), which are an integral part of European Union subsidised farm payments, it was included in an influential review article (van Emden & Williams, 1974).  As pointed out recently by Terry McGlynn over at Small Pond Science, this often rings the death knell for a paper’s citation score.  As a result,  Lewis (1969b) has only been cited 91 times since 1969 and is barely remembered at all.   I remember being invited to be a facilitator at a Populations Under Pressure conference workshop on this very subject at the NERC Centre for Population Biology at Silwood Park about fifteen years ago and being surprised that none of the participants had even heard of Trevor Lewis let alone read his papers.

At the Populations Under Pressure conference brandishing my undergraduate hedgerow report!

The subject of hedgerow and crop edge management is still a highly important research area today, and you will be pleased to know that in the latest paper just submitted from my research group, we cite both of Trevor’s 1969 papers. Hopefully this will do something to redress the balance and bring Trevor some of the recognition that he deserves, however belated.

 

References

Amy, S.R., Heard, M.S., Hartley, S.E., George, C.T., Pywell, R.F. & Staley, J.T. (2015) Hedgerow rejuvenation management affects invertebrate communities through changes to habitat structure. Basic & Applied Ecology, 16: 443-451

Chinery, M. (1973) A Field Guide to the Insects of Britain and Northern Europe.  Collins, London

Lewis, T. (1964). The effects of shelter on the distribution of insect pests. Scientific Horticulture, 17: 74–84

Lewis, T. (1969a). The distribution of flying insects near a low hedgerow. Journal of Applied Ecology 6: 443-452.

Lewis, T. (1969b). The diversity of the insect fauna in a hedgerow and neighbouring fields. Journal of Applied Ecology 6: 453-458.

Sotherton, N.W., Boatman, N.D. & Rands, M.R.W. (1989) The “Conservation Headland” experiment in cereal ecosystems. The Entomologist, 108: 135-143

Thomas, M.B., Wratten, S.D., & Sotherton, N.W. (1991) Creation of ‘island’ habitats in farmland to manipulate populations of beneficial arthropods: predator densities and emigration. Journal of Applied Ecology, 28: 906-917.

Van Emden, H.F. & Williams, G.F. (1974) Insect stability and diversity in agro-ecosystems. Annual Review of Entomology, 19: 455-475

*I still own that copy of Chinery which was a present for my 20^th birthday – take note of the date if anyone wants to send me a present or card 🙂

 

.

 

Thrip, thrips, thripses – A thrips by any other name

As well as the more well-known EntoPub*, the Harper Adams entomologists also indulge in Entolunch**, when we gather in one of our larger offices to eat our packed lunches and keep up to date with what we are doing, covering research, teaching and day-to-day life. This is not because we are anti-social or are averse to mixing with other disciplines, but because our offices are almost 500 m away from the Staff Common Room and nearest food outlet.  Last week our conversation turned to the Thysanoptera, more commonly known as thrips or thunder bugs.

Some fine examples of thrips, including the common thunder bug.

According to Lewis (1997) they were first described by DeGeer in 1744 under the name Physapus, but in 1758, Linneaus, ignoring this, placed the then four known species in a genus Thrips, later elevated to Order by Haliday in 1836.  Why Linneaus decided to call them thrips is a bit of a mystery, as according to the Oxford English Dictionary, thrips is derived from the Latin via Greek, meaning woodworm!

Thrips are tiny little insects, the giants among them, (mainly tropical) can reach lengths of up to 15 mm but most are round about 1-2 mm long (Kirk, 1996; Moritz, 1997).  Although they are not bugs, their feeding process can be described as “piercing-sucking or punch and suck” (Kirk, 1997).

 

There are about 8000 species of thrips worldwide (Lewis, 1997), although probably less than 200 in the UK (Kirk, 1996). Although many are important plant pests (Lewis, 1997), they can also be pollinators and fungivores (Kirk, 1996) or even very effective biological control agents (Gilstrap, 1995).    Some are gall-formers, and these, like some galling aphids, also have fights to the death with their rivals (Crespi, 1988).  All in all, almost as wonderful as aphids 🙂

But I digress, our conversation that lunchtime was not about the biology of thrips, but about the singularity (or plurality) of their name. Thrips are (in)famous for being like sheep, they are thrips whether you are speaking of one or of many, which has, and does, cause some debate among entomologists and others.

http://mxplx.com/memelist/keyword=end

We quite liked thripses although it does conjure visions of Gollum and his precious.

Who knew that Gollum was an entomologist?

Intrigued by the linguistic puzzle of thrips I wondered what it was in other languages. Using Google Translate, and possibly risking a Tolkienesque mistranslation, I found that in most cases, even French, it was boringly enough, thrips.

There were some languages where thrips was not thrips, but not many:

German               thripse

Swedish               trips

Italian                  tripidi

Catalan                 els trips

Estonian               ripslased

Polish                    wciornastki

Czech                    třásněnka

 

Perhaps my favourite was the Afrikaans, blaaspootjies. On breaking it down into parts it turns out that blaas means bladder and pootjies, legs, which doesn’t seem to make a lot of sense.

Bengali, Chinese and Japanese, were quite picturesque.

 

Bengali              থ্রিপস্ (thripas)

Chinese             牧草虫 (mùcǎo chóng)

Japanese          アザミウマ (azamiuma)

 

But the most ornate was Tamil

(llaippēṉ)

Which is quite a long word for such small insects, but very pretty all the same.  If anyone has any more suggestions for the naming of thrips, do feel free to comment.

 

References

Crespi, B.J. (1988) Risks and benefits of lethal male fighting in the colonial, polygynous thrips Hoplothrips karnyi (Insecta: Thysanoptera).  Behavorial Ecology & Sociobiology, 22, 293-301.

Gilstrap, F.E. (1995) Six-spotted thrips: a gift from nature that controls spider mites. [In] Thrips Biology and Management, pp 305-316, (ed. B.L. Parker, M. Skinner & T. Lewis),  Plenum Press, New York.

Kirk, W.D.J. (1996)  Thrips,  Naturalist’s Handbooks, Richmond Publishing Co. Ltd., Slough UK. [A very nice and simple introduction to the wonderful world of thrips]

Kirk, W.D.J. (1997) Feeding, [In] Thrips as Crop Pests, pp 119-174 (ed T Lewis), CAB International, Wallingford Oxford

Lewis, T. (1997) Pest thrips in perspective, [In] Thrips as Crop Pests, pp 1-13 (ed T Lewis), CAB International, Wallingford Oxford

Moritz, G. (1997) Structure, growth and development.  [In] Thrips as Crop Pests, pp 15-63 (ed T Lewis), CAB International, Wallingford Oxford

 

Post script

Slapped wrist for me – Elina Mäntylä has pointed out that in Finnish, thrips is ripsiäinen, probably to do with the wing structure.  I should have known that having lived and worked in Finland at the Pest Investigation Department.  interestingly, Google Translate thinks it is Thrips in Finnish – but if you do Finnish to English it does indeed translate ripsiäinen to thrips.

 

Glossary

*EntoPub            Drinks and a meal in a local hostelry organised by one of the Harper Adams Entomologists but not confined solely to entomologists.  We do like to mix with non-entomologists occasionally 🙂  Held at approximately 10 day intervals.

**EntoLunch     A communal occasion when the Harper Adams entomologists get together in office AY02 and eat their packed lunches whilst chatting, usually with some entomological connection.  Again this is not entirely confined to entomologists, we are usually joined by a couple of soil and water scientists who share our exile on the edge of the campus 🙂  A daily event during the working week.