Crushing myths, pinning down facts about insects

What does an adult luna moth eat? Nothing, because it has no mouth. These short-lived insects are among those that students collected and are displaying in the halls of the biology department, along with posters on the interesting characteristics of 12 different insect orders.

By Carol Clark

“The first day, I flinched,” says Emily Fu of the Emory Maymester course “Insect Biology.” She recalls feeling queasy as the professor, Jaap de Roode, showed a series of close-up images of creepy crawlers.

“I was seriously considering dropping the class. But as we learned more about them, and how awesome they are, I actually started to appreciate them,” says Fu, a junior majoring in biology and psychology. “Insects are really complex and much smarter than most people realize.”

Fu and the 11 other undergraduates in the class created a buzz in the biology department recently when they unveiled dozens of pinned and mounted specimens they collected during four field trips. The students also displayed scientific posters they created for insect orders that particularly intrigued them, wowing guests at the reception with their newfound knowledge.

Add crunch to your lunch: As the human population burgeons to 9 billion, insects are looking like the future of food, according to a recent U.N.report.

The female large blue butterfly, for instance, has evolved to hang out around ant nests. The butterfly lays eggs that hatch into caterpillars that look like, and smell like, an ant larva. “Some ants are tricked into taking care of the butterfly larvae,” Fu says, adding that the ants will even fight to protect the butterfly babies from parasitic wasps that try to lay their eggs inside them. When the ants attack one of these egg-laying wasps, however, the wasp releases a pheromone that drives the ants into a frenzy. The ants end up attacking and killing each other instead.

“A lot of crazy stuff is going on in the insect world,” muses Tufayel Ahmed, a senior majoring in biology.

A snack table was laid out with nacho-cheese Doritos, mealworm beetle larvae seasoned with Mexican spices and salt-and-vinegar crickets.

“The crickets are a bit stale,” warns Wilson Hunt, a junior majoring in biology whose poster was entitled “Orthoptera as Food.” While they may not be fresh, he adds encouragingly, they contain 60 percent protein, versus only 18 percent in a burger.

In addition to new culinary experiences, the reception gave guests a leg-up on vocabulary.

“Every bug is an insect, but not every insect is a bug,” says Alycia Patton, a senior majoring in biology. She explains that the forewings of true bugs, one branch of an evolutionary tree, are thick and leathery where they attach near the body and thin and membranous near the tips. Another defining feature: Mouth parts that can pierce the tissue of a plant or another insect.

Patton traces her love of entomology back to her childhood. She enjoys finding unexpected beauty in the tiniest of insects, like the vivid colors of the candy-striped leafhopper.

But she reserves her highest praise for the homely mole cricket. “Its front legs have little scoops on them so that it can dig tunnels,” Patton says. “The males build the tunnels in a way that amplifies its mating calls. It creates its own sound system.”

Maura Sare, a junior majoring in biology and environmental sciences, overcame an aversion to touching insects during the class field trips. “Most insects aren’t going to bite you,” she says, and many have evolved much more interesting ways of protecting themselves.

Take the stick insect. “If a predator grabs one of its legs, it can just detach it and get away,” Sare says. And they have fantastic camouflage, she adds. “We actually don’t have any examples of stick insects here today. We couldn’t find any.”

Stone Mountain was the site of one of the class collecting trips.

Alexander Heaven appreciates saturniids, including the large, lime-green luna moth, “because they’re pretty,” and because that beauty is ephemeral. “An adult luna moth doesn’t have a mouth, so it can’t eat,” Heaven says. “When they emerge from the cocoon, they have about five days to find a mate before they just fade away.”

Heaven, a sophomore majoring in environmental sciences, is also a big fan of the praying mantis. “During mating, the female mantis will cannibalize the male,” he says. “She’ll turn around and rip his face off. That’s awesome. They’re just really great predators, the best at what they do.”

Biology major Kevin Flood points to a pinned example of another great predator, the robber fly. It looks like a bee, but that’s a trick of mimicry designed to lure real bees near so the robber fly can eat them, Flood says. “See that needle-like thing coming out of its mouth? It wraps its legs around the bee, sticks the needle in, liquefies the bee’s insides and then sucks them up like a straw.”

As if bees didn’t have enough to worry about.

Head first: Biology post-doc Daniel Kueh dropped by the reception and learned that crickets are like potato chips. It's hard to stop at just one.

Pesticides and pathogens have been linked to a rise in colony collapse disorder, which is causing mass disappearances in honeybees. The issue is under intensive study due the importance of these insects, says Nikki Mehran, a senior majoring in biology.

“I was surprised to learn how many food crops that honeybees pollinate,” she says. “One-third of our diet would be missing if all bees suddenly disappeared.”

Mehran says the fieldwork was her favorite part of the class. “We got to go to Stone Mountain and I’d never been there,” she says. “After coming out of finals and being trapped inside, it felt good to get out in nature. I had a great time.”

The “Insect Biology” class was launched this spring by Jaap de Roode, an evolutionary biologist whose lab is one of only a handful in the world focused on monarch butterflies. “More than half of all animal species are insects, and they are extremely important for many things, from health to ecology,” he says.

De Roode hopes to develop the class to include a field trip to the Ecuadorian Amazon. Meanwhile, he says, the insects that the students collected and the posters they made will be on display near introductory biology classes “so other students can learn and be inspired by this work.”

Credits: Luna moth by Shawn Hanrahan; insect snacks and Daniel Hueh photos by Carol Clark; Alycia Patton photo by Malia Escobar; field trip photo by Jaap de Roode.

Related:
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What aphids can teach us about immunity 

Godzilla: King of the tracemakers

Still taken from original 1954 Godzilla (Gojira), showing a bipedal trackway going from a terrestrial to marine environment. But also check out the prominent groove in the middle of the trackway, caused by a tail dragging behind it, and four forward-pointing toes on each foot.

Emory paleontologist Anthony Martin, who studies tracks, burrows and other traces of life, has written an ichnology review of the new movie “Godzilla” for his blog, “Life Traces of the Georgia Coast.” Below is an excerpt.

"Upon learning that Godzilla would be making its way back onto movie screens this summer, my first thought was not about whether it would it would serve as a powerful allegory exploring the consequences of nuclear power. Nor did I wonder if it would be a metaphor of nature cleansing the world’s ecological ills through the deliberate destruction of humanity. Surprisingly, I didn’t even ponder whether the director of this version (Gareth Edwards) would have our hero incinerate Matthew Broderick with a radioactively fueled exhalation as cinematic penance for the 1998 version of Godzilla.

"Instead, my first thought was, 'Wow, I’ll bet Godzilla will leave some awesome tracks!' My second thought was, 'Wow, I’ll bet Godzilla will leave some awesome bite and claw marks!' My third thought was, 'Wow, I’ll bet Godzilla will leave some awesome feces!' All of these musings could be summarized as, 'Wow, I’ll bet Godzilla will leave awesome traces, no matter what!'

"So as an ichnologist who is deeply concerned that movie monsters make plenty of tracks and other traces whilst rampaging, I am happy to report that yes, this Godzilla and its kaiju compatriots did indeed make some grand traces. Could they have made traces worthy of ichnological appraisal, ones that could be readily compared to trace fossils made by Godzilla’s ancestors? Yes, but these traces could have been better, and let me explain why."

Read the entire review on Martin’s blog.


Related:
Bringing to life "Dinosaurs Without Bones"
Dinosaur burrows yield clues to climate change

Confessions of a turtle freak

It's World Turtle Day! Time to come out of your shell and celebrate with other turtle lovers. (Illustration by Jason Raish.)

By Nancy Sedieman, Emory Magazine

I am a turtle freak.

It’s not a label I readily accepted six years ago as I sat among researchers and conservationists in a Savannah conference center, scribbling notes on presentations delivered at the International Sea Turtle Symposium.

One of the speakers made an offhand comment about turtle “freaks” or groupies who attend the symposium with the primary goal of snapping up an array of turtle-themed items from around the world that were sold in the vendor marketplace. I was insulted.

True, I was not technically a sea turtle researcher, but I had spent all night on Florida beaches on turtle patrols, accompanying researchers as they tagged nesting loggerheads and leatherbacks. I had written about their work, read scientific papers on satellite telemetry, loggerhead hatchling mortality, and the migratory behavior of male hawksbills in the Caribbean. Archie Carr was one of my heroes.

Okay, I was one of few “researchers” in the audience who was wearing a loggerhead T-shirt and silver turtle charms that dangled from my earrings, bracelet, and necklace. And yes, my research notebook did have a leatherback turtle embossed on it. But my attire certainly did not mean that I was some sort of fanatic.

My choice in home decor . . . well, perhaps that tells a different story. I survey what I can see from my vantage point on the couch. There’s the loggerhead tea candle stand, the Buddha in the form of a turtle, a framed oil painting of Madagascan flat-tailed tortoises, a jeweled turtle something, a turtle crossing sign . . . and we haven’t left the living room yet.

I am resigned to the fact that when I pass from this life, the headline will read: “Woman Survived by 189 Turtle Figurines.”

What is it about me and turtles? Why does my heart lift whenever I see one of those (even I have to admit) unearthly looking creatures?

It all began at Emory with my exploration of the Lullwater Preserve. What started as a fun pastime—finding box turtles in the deep forest, catching glimpses of soft-shell turtles lurking at the bottle of the creek, and chuckling at painted turtles who managed to wedge themselves in the most unlikely positions in the lakeside brush—led me to wonder about their habits and habitats. Noting my budding interest in turtles, former environmental studies undergraduate Mandy Schmitt Mahoney generously invited me to join her and researchers from other universities in monitoring nesting sea turtles along the Florida coast.

Read the whole article in Emory Magazine.

Tracking interactions of bears and humans

 Rae Wynn-Grant and a fellow researcher tag a tranquilized black bear.

From Emory Magazine

As a child growing up in Northern California, Emory graduate Rae Wynn-Grant was enthralled by the nature shows she watched on public television, mesmerized by the wild animals and exotic settings.

“The host was almost always an older, white, usually British man. I didn’t even know any of those people. I was an eight-year-old black girl, so I thought it must not be for me,” Wynn-Grant says.

Now a PhD candidate in ecology at Columbia University, Wynn-Grant is completing her dissertation research on the influence of human activity on carnivore behavioral patterns. As part of her research, she has tracked lions, been chased by an angry bull elephant, and dug hibernating female black bears out of their dens to count, weigh, measure, and tag their newborn cubs.

“The fact that I get to go out there and be up close and personal with these animals, doing my best to create important science, it feels like a dream,” she says.

Her dissertation focuses on a population of black bears in the Lake Tahoe Basin of western Nevada. The bears, which are not native to the area, have migrated from Northern California, and Wynn-Grant has been tracking their interaction with humans, their migration patterns, and their survival rates.

The journey from spellbound nature fangirl to intrepid conservation biologist started for her as an undergraduate at Emory. She took a broad range of classes, from social science to ure ecology, but got hooked on conservation biology.

Read more about Wynn-Grant and other animal research in the current issue of Emory Magzine.

Photo courtesy Rae Wynn-Grant

Armelagos leaves rich legacy of bio-archeology, teaching, friendship

George Armelagos at his Georgia beach house with his cat, Miles.

By Carol Clark

George Armelagos, professor of anthropology at Emory University and one of the founders and leaders of the field of paleopathology, died May 15, just six days after being diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. 

Armelagos, who was 77, was the son of Greek immigrants and grew up outside of Detroit. He came to Emory in 1993 as the Goodrich C. White Professor of Anthropology, and helped solidify the University’s reputation as a national leader in the bio-cultural approach to anthropology. He continued to teach, mentor and publish until his death.

He is survived by his brothers, Nick and James Armelagos of Detroit, as well as numerous friends, former students and colleagues throughout the world.

“George was a joyous man who loved life, people and his work,” said Peter Brown, Emory professor of anthropology and global health. “He taught all of us many things – humility, generosity, curiosity, hard work, and the critical importance of social relationships.”

He was also a prolific scientist, leaving behind 13 books and monographs and more than 250 journal articles.

“I enjoy what I’m doing,” Armelagos said last year of his lengthy career. “It’s energizing. How could I get tired of it?”

Prepping samples in Nubia, 1963

While still a graduate student at the University of Colorado, Armelagos worked on a dig in Sudanese Nubia, including human remains that dated back 500 to 10,000 years.

As Armelagos put it: “Every skeleton has a story to tell. You can tell how a person lived, and how they died.” He didn’t restrict his analysis to individual skeletons, however, applying epidemiology and demography to study patterns of illness and death among populations. This revolutionary approach to paleopathology led to a flurry of groundbreaking papers.

Working with his graduate students, Armelagos discovered tetracycline in the bones of the Nubians — the first documented case of ancient people consuming low levels of this naturally occurring antibiotic, which was likely generated by beer made from grain stored in clay pots. In 2010, he built on this work by collaborating with a chemist and leading expert in tetracycline and other antibiotics. The resulting chemical analysis of the mummy bones indicated that the ancient Nubians were deliberately brewing and consuming the therapeutic agent, providing the strongest evidence yet that the art of making antibiotics was common practice nearly 2,000 years ago.

One of Armelagos’ major contributions was this marriage of biology with archeology. He used this approach to ask “some of the really big questions of our time,” said anthropologist Debra Martin in a 2013 article about his work. “He showed how the past sheds light not only on the origins of human conditions, but where we’re going. We see that racism, for example, is as deeply embedded in human behavior as it’s ever been, and yet it’s not in our biology or genes. It’s in the way that we organize ourselves culturally that we create some of these problems around race, nutrition, health and violence.” 

Martin, a former student of Armelagos, is now a professor at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. 

"Every skeleton has a story to tell," said Armelagos, at work in a lab during the 1980s.

Armelagos made inroads in our understanding of the evolutionary history of infectious diseases like syphilis. He was also a world expert on the impact of the human diet on evolution. In 1980, he co-wrote “Consuming Passions,” about the anthropology of eating, which was popular in book clubs and is referenced in classrooms to this day.

In addition to writing about food, he was an accomplished chef who loved to cook gourmet meals for his students and turn the dining table of his home into an extension of the classroom.

The highest honors were awarded to Armelagos for his scholarship and service to anthropology, including the Viking Medal from the Wenner-Gren Foundation, the Charles Darwin Award for Lifetime Achievement to Biological Anthropology from the American Association of Physical Anthropologists and the Franz Boas Award for Exemplary Service to Anthropology from the American Anthropological Association. In addition to Emory, where he served as chair of the Department of Anthropology from 2003 to 2009, his career included teaching positions at the University of Utah, the University of Massachusetts (Amherst) and the University of Florida.

Emory graduate Kristin Harper with Armelagos in 2013. Under his tutelage, Harper published the first phylogenetic approach to the centuries-old debate over the origins of syphilis.

Armelagos taught thousands of undergraduates and hundreds of graduate students. At the meeting of the American Association of Physical Anthropologists in 2013, former students and colleagues gathered with Armelagos for a day-long session devoted to his research and mentorship – and a bit of roasting related to his often mischievous sense of humor.

Armelagos loved to give students mementos, like his famous t-shirts imprinted with “Bone to be Wild” and a dancing skeleton. He was also well-known for his collection of air-sickness bags, amassed during his early days in the field when he would often get sick on the bumpy flights of small planes. He displayed some of his favorites in the anthropology lab, like one with a picture of a kangaroo holding open her pouch with the caption: “For that clean feeling.”

He occasionally used one of his hundreds of air-sick bags to bring food to work. “No one has ever stolen my lunch,” he said.

A private interment service will be held near St. Catherine’s Island, Georgia. A public memorial of his life and work will be held at Emory on Friday, August 29. With his estate, Armelagos endowed funds to benefit scholarship at Emory, the University of Massachusetts, and the University of Colorado. In lieu of flowers, he requested that contributions be made to these endowments, including the Armelagos-Brown Bio-Cultural Lecture and the Armelagos Graduate Teaching Award.

All photos courtesy of Armelagos' friends and colleagues.

Related:
Bone to be wild: Fleshing out a career devoted to skeletons and people
Ancient brewers tapped antibiotic secrets
Skeletons point to Columbus voyage for syphilis origins
Dawn of agriculture took toll on health
Mummies tell history of a 'modern' plague
Putting teeth into the Barker hypothesis
Scholar reads the classics -- and bones
Brain vs. gut: Our inborn food fight