Cheshire

Why do I study bugs?

I get this question all the time from people who learn about what I study. They really don’t understand why somebody would like insects at all. They might think they’re gross, annoying or they might suffer from a condition called entomophobia-they’re deathly afraid of insects. They simply cannot fathom why I’d want to dedicate my life to studying insects.

Oddly enough, I kind of understand this. People don’t really have a whole lot of experience with insects. They might spray the occasional wasp nest, swat the occasional mosquito or put a flea collar on their dog or cat. To most people, insects are…well, just kind of there. They might be an occasional annoyance, but for the most part the average person doesn’t really know what type of role insects play in their lives. They might be marginally aware of where honey comes from, that silk is produced by caterpillars or that insects are major agricultural pests. They might even know that the black death (vectored by fleas) nearly wiped out Europe in the 1400s. If they’re especially up on their history they might know that the construction of the Panama canal was stopped for awhile because of malaria, which is vectored by mosquitoes.

Insects have a huge effect on our lives. Their lives are inextricably intertwined with our own. They’re not just the occasional annoyance or pest, but they’re actually important in ways that not many animals can be. They provide us with some goods, like honey, beeswax and silk. Termites and locusts also serve as food in third world countries. Here in America, crickets and mealworms serve as food for exotic pets and provide the occasional culinary novelty.

But their importance extends so much further than this. The major agricultural pests in the world are insects. So are the major biomedical pests. Many times, we control these agricultural and biomedical pests with insects. As strange as it seems, insects are the root of many the problems the world faces today…and they’re the solution.

In short, insects are important. That’s why I study them…because the smallest animals on earth, believe it or not, actually have the power to starve entire nations and alter the course of history.

But that’s not why I love them. That’s not what keeps me interested.

Besides being incredibly important, the biology of insects is fascinating as well. Let’s take the honeybee. It starts life as a small legless wormlike animal most people wouldn’t recognize as an insect. The larva then moults into something called a pupa which resembles a dormant adult. Inside the pupa, tissues are broken down, new tissues are formed and a little bit later, out pops the honeybee we’re all familiar with. It goes from this defenseless worm-like thing that most people wouldn’t recognize as a honeybee and emerges as something which can fly. Weird, right?

Well, it gets better. You see to me, this is just something mundane. Ordinary. Not boring, but basic. Even at the most basic level, insects do these things which to us mammals seem foreign. Their babies may look like something from a completely different order. Or they may live in something from a completely different order.

Another example of insect strangeness…the tachinid flies, for which this blog is named. You see, tachinid flies have a neat evolutionary history. Their ancestors all lived in rotting carcasses, like modern day houseflies. They adapted to living in rotting carcasses, dealing with all the hideously toxic byproducts of decomposition. These adaptions made it easier for them to live in an equally toxic environment-inside other animals.

But we’ll get to more advanced things in due time. This is just an introductory post.

In the past, setting deadlines never quite worked out well for me. Expect new posts every week, but don’t be surprised if they end up being sporadic. I’ll probably end up posting less during August through May because of school.