Bugged Read online

  More pins decorate the water bug sitting on a porous Styrofoam sheet. It rests atop a piece of paper soaked with a khaki puddle of bug juice.

  “It makes me pissed off when people view this as creepy,” he says, encircling the bug with pins like a knife thrower. “I’ll tell ya, the most annoying thing is when I say I’m an entomologist, and people are like, ‘Ooo, like in Silence of the Lambs,’” and he starts nodding. “Yeah,” he sarcastically replies, “I skin women.” We laugh, and I can’t help but break into singing the goth keyboard synth from “Goodbye Horses” played during the infamous cross-dress scene.

  The conversation transitions to the John Fowles novel and movie The Collector, in which the kidnapper also happens to own a bunch of butterflies. “There’s like a lot of negative stereotypes of entomologists and maybe even taxidermists,” he says.

  “Right?” I agree as he places the final pins around an unflinching leg. “I think it probably has to start with Norman—” Bates, we say in unison. I tell him about the unhealthy BDSM relationship with an entomologist in The Duke of Burgundy. He fires back with Woman in the Dunes, which is a psychosexual romance, again, with an entomologist as victim. My thought is that society in general is not keen on those who dabble with dead things. “The Brits view this very differently from the Americans,” Lorenzo says. He mentions another movie, based on the A. S. Byatt novel, Angels and Insects, which takes place during the Victorian era. A man processes insect collections for England’s affluent. It was during this time when key mediators between man and insect not only answered what a bug is, but helped expand the study into the smorgasbord of topics and concentrations seen today. These entophiles built the foundation for entomology. It was done with cabinets. Famous UK banker John Lubbock offered his observation of the period in an 1856 article in the Entomologist’s Annual: “The present has been called the age of insects; this century at least might be called the age of collections of insects, and not of insects only, for we have collections of almost everything, of shells and stuffed birds, of ferns and flowers, of grasses and coins, of autographs and old china, of Assyrian marbles and even of postage stamps.”

  These were stored in what are called cabinets of curiosity. The Evolution Store emulates this tradition as does Parisian landmark store Deyrolle, established in 1831, which not only informed the trend but had a part in describing new species that bear its eponym today. Privately owned cabinets of the elite gradually expanded into museums. For those who regarded it as the Victorian version of Beanie Babies, Lubbock gets a bit judgmental but raises a valid point: “A collection of insects which is not studied is of as little real use as books which are not read … Yet without collections there could be very little Entomology … To describe species so that they may be recognized by other observers is an art much more difficult than would a priori be expected … [and] if this had been always done, many mistakes and much confusion would have been avoided.”

  And boy were those early days ever riddled with confusion.

  * * *

  Critical observation lies at the core of bug science. Proper descriptions would aid future research, but those initial details were in dire need of editing. As mentioned in the History of Entomology, for example, first-century Roman naturalist Pliny the Elder believed that ticks lack an anus. The origin of bugs was also a headscratcher. Early Asian descriptions of fireflies claimed they developed from “decaying grass.” According to Franciscan monk Bartholomeus Anglicus, butterflies were “small birds” whose poop hatched forth worms. The oldest (crude) drawings of insects from wood engravings are found in the 1491 edition of a Latin natural history encyclopedia called Ortus Sanitatis. One depiction of a snail looks like an eight-legged slug with a yarmulka on its back. Later, in 1602, we have the first book dedicated wholly to insects, De Animalibus Insectis.6 Finally, by the time of its printing, entomology and, more importantly, the systematics involved had become an established scientific study. Archaic yet stylish, the wooden engravings throughout the book are intricate enough for insect identification—more so than eight-legged snails. The details are a tad embellished. For instance, beehives have hallway designs as though they were a cross-section of a Swedish hotel, and underground ant colonies, clearly a diagnostic guess, have an M. C. Escher vibe.

  As late as the seventeenth century, philosophers Francis Bacon and René Descartes believed that insects sprang from decay, with no reproductive behavior involved. But “spontaneous generation” was disproved by Francesco Redi in 1668 when he held bugs up to a microscope, discovering they came from female-laid eggs. (These prototype microscopes were nicknamed “flea-glasses.”) That same century began to produce scientific illustrations of insects aided by microscope. Next, Marcello Malpighi further drove entomology as a separate field of study by documenting the metamorphosis stages of a Bombyx silk moth. Anatomy began taking precedence in describing these creatures. Jan Swammerdam detailed the molts of various insects and developed insect classifications in the mid-1600s that resemble those still used today. John Ray compiled all the taxonomic ideas being formulated in “systematical unity” in the 1710 work Historia Insectorum.

  When I ask Lorenzo Forcella whom he’d consider as the father of entomology, he says, “I imagine the first entomologist was someone in the Amazon jungles.” He walks me to a glass case displaying a long-horned harlequin beetle—a red-flamed shell that Amazon tribes replicated on their war shields. Then he shows me beautiful metallic beetles that tribes strung into necklaces. “We’re talking tens of thousands of years! If you start digging into this, it’s like peeling an onion.”

  The earliest depiction of an insect traces back to a drawing on a bison bone from 18,000 BCE. The illustration, by our early Cro-Magnon ancestors, shows a rhaphidophorid cave cricket. The first depiction of a human-insect interaction, however, dates closer toward the first agricultural revolution. A faded painting found in Spain’s Cave of the Spider from somewhere between 8,000 to 15,000 years ago depicts a “honey hunter” interacting with a beehive, surrounded by a swarm. We can only hope this wasn’t the explorer’s obituary.

  Around 3100 BCE, Egypt’s founder of the first dynasty, King Menes, designated the oriental hornet as the symbol of Lower Egypt. It was “probably meant to symbolize the spreading of fear before the powerful monarch,” according to 1973’s History of Entomology. And ancient Egypt’s Khepera—a beetle-faced god that was a symbol of creation and rebirth derived from the dung beetles that emerged from rolling balls of excrement—represents the round sun passing over the land. Egyptian soldiers commonly wore scarab rings, and after they died and were mummified, a carving of a scarab was often wrapped in place over their hearts.

  In southeastern Cherokee folklore, a beetle creates the entirety of land on Earth from the muddy depths of the ocean. Meanwhile, the Cochiti tribe of New Mexico tells the origin story of a beetle who, while carrying a bag of stars,7 accidentally spills them across the sky to create the Milky Way. Crestfallen, he hides his head in shame, which is why beetles look at the ground to this day.

  The Bible cast bugs in a more negative light. Whenever insects make a cameo, they tend to be associated with the wrath of God (e.g., locust plagues).

  In olden days, Athenian women and men wore cicada-shaped hair clasps. Greek children also played with cicadas. Treated as fondly as toys, they were sometimes placed in the children’s graves. To help avert the evil eye, an iron locust was placed atop the Acropolis. In nineteenth-century New England, lore has it that dragonflies were deemed the “Devil’s darning needle.” Dragonflies were said to pay a visit to kids who cursed, lied, or whined while they slept. Children were warned that they would have their lips sewn shut for committing such transgressions.

  In terms of systematics, Aristotle is largely considered the first to view entomology as a distinct science by separating what he called “bloodless animals” from the rest. But the study was largely ignored until the Renaissance and the Scientific Revolution, when enough “fathers” of entomolo
gy exist to warrant a paternity test. Each field of concentration seems to have these “fathers.” Some have even been called the “Mozart or Schubert” of entomology, or, due to their passionate regard, the “insects’ Homer.” One crucial but underappreciated figure was artist Maria Sibylla Merian, later called the study’s “mother.”8 Of their ilk, the most intriguing was Pierre André Latreille—whose life was saved by a corpse-eating beetle.

  An eighteenth-century zoologist and beetle beneficiary, Latreille was born in 1762 in Brive, France, and essentially became the head of European entomology when he took a post at France’s National Museum of Natural History in 1827. As a young man, Latreille had quickly gained patrons due to his affability and interest in natural history. Fueled by upper-class support, he had attended college in Paris, scrounging for insects in the streets, armed with the primary tools used by today’s capturers—nets, killing jars, forceps, and spreading boards.9 By 1792, Latreille, regarded as the “prince of entomology,” had befriended notable naturalist Jean-Baptiste Lamarck, who was the first to classify arachnids as separate from insects. Lamarck ushered Latreille into the National Museum of Natural History, where he began to catalog exhibit insects. His work served as the impetus behind his most famous contribution to entomology, Précis des caractéres génériques des insectes disposés dans un ordre naturel (roughly translated as Dissertation of the General Characteristics of Disposed Insects in the Natural Order). Published in 1796, the work prototyped the current demarcation of insect orders into families. He built off past research: a Dane wrote about insect eyes; a Dutchman, insect antennae; a Swiss gentleman, genitalia; and Carl Linnaeus, a Swede, propelled zoological nomenclature in 1735. Naturalists gradually pieced together what composed an insect, and Latreille incorporated all these ideas while classifying, deriving what other scientists consider real relationships and “families” for them.

  Classification is the root of this science. And it almost died in a dungeon cell.

  Latreille, who was a priest, seemingly forgot to swear allegiance to the state when the Roman Catholic Church was absorbed into the French government during the revolution. Imprisoned for over a year in Bordeaux, Latreille was sentenced to be executed by drowning. It was in his jail cell that he saw a creeping Necrobia ruficollis, awaiting his death like a vulture. The bacon-colored beetle was carnivorous, and frequented decomposing cadavers.

  Days later, a physician found the entomology prince crawling frantically on the prison floor “preoccupied” with this beetle, writes zoologist David Damkaer. The physician brought the newly discovered specimen to a friend—15-year-old Bory de Saint-Vincent, a budding naturalist. He was familiar with Latreille and his important contributions to the field, and he knew that this specific beetle was unknown. So the imprisoned entomologist sent a messenger: “You tell [Bory] that I am the Abbé Latreille, and that I am going to die at Guyana, before having published my Examen des Genres de Fabricius.” Bory’s father and uncle managed to utilize what political ties they had, and Latreille was bailed as a “convalescent” under the condition he be returned when asked by French authorities. His cellmates were executed soon after. Today, in the Pére Lachaise Cemetery in Paris, on the base of Latreille’s tomb obelisk is a carving of Necrobia ruficollis with the inscription: “Latreille’s savior.”

  Thanks to that little guy, our taxonomical lens sharpened over the next century.

  The science’s true epoch began in 1826. Using Latreille’s classification system, English entomologists Reverend William Kirby and William Spence completed the four-volume encyclopedic benchmark An Introduction to Entomology. Their descriptions of bug mechanics in both physiology and anatomy have withstood the test of time, finding uses in forensics, pest control, pharmaceuticals, and weapon development. The intricate, factual outlining took over 10 years to produce and must have caused head-splitting migraines. As William Spence lamented: “On [venturing] into Entomology we found the most deplorable … confusion … the same names given to different parts, and different parts called by the same names—important parts without any names etc., etc. so that to make matter for two lines frequently requires anatomical investigations which occupy a day.”

  The goal of the two Williams’ An Introduction to Entomology was to make an “attractive portal of economy and natural history” to entice “experimental agriculturists and gardeners” to learn more about the benefit of bugs. In Bugs and the Victorians, author and historian J. F. M. Clark further elaborates on their intentions: “Insects … provided instruction for the improvement of arts and manufactures: bees and ants were model architects; the insect chrysalis illustrated the beauty and technique of expert lace-makers; and the wasp demonstrated the requisite skills for papermaking.”

  We’ll see later on that William Kirby and William Spence were exactly correct. With a firm foundation established and collectors running rampant, Reverend Kirby went on to become known as the father of British entomology, and by 1833, the Royal Entomological Society was founded. Meetings took place in London’s Thatched House Tavern with the society’s badge boasting a twisted wing parasite (Stylops kirbyi)10 named after their honorary life president. Kirby wanted to know, as do I, what secrets insects might hold. “We see and feel the mischief occasioned by such creatures,” wrote the wise Reverend, “but are not aware of the good ends answered by them, which probably very much exceed it.”

  That realization of the good that insects do in the world came later, in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. But it would take a couple of agricultural catastrophes to get there. Thanks to the Great French Wine Blight that destroyed nearly 6.2 million acres of vineyards in the mid-1800s, scientists turned to the entomological findings learned over the past century. In 1854, states began appointing entomologists, starting with New York’s Asa Fitch. Congress launched in 1876 what eventually became the Bureau of Entomology. As the global population grew, farmers no longer viewed the occasional crop failure as an acceptable loss. Around 1888, Albert Koebele and W. G. Klee introduced the potential advantages of biological control of damaging pests through the parasitic fly Cryptochaetum and ladybird beetles, which saved California’s citrus industry from scale insects. By 1919, noted one journalist, entomology was no longer “regarded as a harmless and somewhat ridiculous hobby.” Fast-forward to 1947, when the United States used captured German V-2 rockets to usher the first animal into space: fruit flies.

  * * *

  The ecological influence of insects is discussed in the modern day in a variety of research studies, news outlets, and, most important, congregations known as entomological societies. About 22 such groups have been meeting for over a century. Mainly these societies are populated by affable folks seeking fellow bug lovers. Still, at times, the groups can be downright vindictive.

  Established in 1884, the Entomological Society of Washington (ESW) hosted a vanguard of the field’s leaders, like insecticide advocate L. O. Howard, and entertaining members, like German refugee and beetle fanatic Henry Ulke—a man who painted Lincoln’s portrait as well as adjourned meetings by playing Wagner piano tunes. The society’s purpose? Rubbing elbows and sharing, among other things, cockroach stories. (One involved a nicotine-addicted cockroach Howard cherished.) Among the myths from the early days of the society was the feud between two of its presidents, the lepidopterist John B. Smith and his “rival” Harrison G. Dyar. Although they’d done research together, a “mutual dislike developed” between the two around the 1890s, wrote ESW historian T. J. Spilman, as evidenced by the scientific names of insects they named. In a passive-aggressive move to piss off Smith, Dyar “named an especially fat and ugly moth smithiformis.” According to Spilman, Smith parried back by dubbing a new genus of moth after Dyar with a pinch of scatologic innuendo. Thenceforth Dyaria moths run amok across the world.11

  When it came to bumping heads, no ESW member was more outspoken than Alexandre Arsène Girault. Opinions and poetry slipped into his scientific papers. In one from the early 1900s, Gi
rault gives an ESW president a verbal backhand over a disagreement about chalcid wasps:

  With impunity’s gaunt grace;

  Ah, come, past coward, lily-livered liar,

  Fair-tongued sweet-mouthing unctuous friar

  Let’s see what’s writ across thy face!

  I’m guessing this was the modern-day equivalent to website comment sections turned virulent, otherwise known as flame wars. Lorenzo told me he’s seen this online on Entomo-L. This listserv discussion forum with a design scheme stuck in the 1990s serves as a hub for entomological chatter, and though it’s rare, debates do occur between scientists and pest control workers. “If they were in a room,” says Lorenzo, “they’d be stabbing each other.” But during my time lightly combing Entomo-L, I have only seen the forum function as the entomological societies of yore did when they first began. Members help each other on research papers, sell specimens from collections, and lend out extra Uganda flies from an insect excursion. Among the most popular requests from these hobbyists and professionals is insect identification. Entomo-Lers seem happy to offer their expertise, whereas in some societies—a 1987 survey reported—amateurs get the cold shoulder. For your general ID-ing inquiries I suggest using Michigan State University’s public diagnostic services. Like a taxonomical WebMD, they’ll tell you if that mystery bee in your backyard is sting-y.