Any Questions?

After my presentation to the Austin Butterfly Forum last month, I opened the floor to questions from the membership. Three questions stood out, and I would like to share them here, along with perhaps more refined answers than I gave at the time. Meanwhile, I am always happy to entertain questions from my readers. Ask away!

© Mike Quinn

Q: You mentioned finding all these species new to your area. How do you figure that out, and how do you decide whether to make that public?
Answer: I do not always know whether I have something significant or worthy of reporting, but I like to err on the side of a possible new discovery. Making an observation public helps in the verification process because more eyes, and often better-informed individuals, are looking at it. If someone shames you for posting a "common" species that you identified as something more rare, then that is on them, not you. If you are not posting [to iNaturalist or Bugguide.net for example], then you are not contributing to our collective knowledge. Everyone makes mistakes, and if you are not, then you are not learning, as well as not contributing. There is always a risk of looking stupid, but it is never wrong to put something out there (I then shared my own misidentification of a Mexican Silverspot butterfly that turned out to be much more exciting and significant than posting what I thought at the time was "merely" a Gulf Fritillary). While I normally have a better-than-average idea of what is supposed to occur where, I am as vulnerable as the next person to making mistakes or incorrect assumptions. It bruises your ego for a bit, but everyone is more informed in the long run.

Alpine butterflies are feeling the heat of global warming

Q: Have you noticed a decline in insect populations, and if so what do you attribute that to? Do you think global warming is having an impact?
Answer: Where I live we see great fluctuations in insect abundance and diversity from one year to the next, usually related to the amount of precipitation we receive, or lack thereof. The extreme swings of the weather pendulum seem to be something rather new, and would tend to lend credence to the idea that climate change is a real phenomenon. We are seeing more southerly species appearing in Colorado that we have not seen previously, or not as frequently. There have been scientific studies that show pretty conclusively that alpine species are dwindling in numbers as their high elevation habitat becomes too hot and inhospitable. I think there is no question that global warming is having an impact. Those whose occupations are in the fossil fuel industry may have another opinion.

Who you discover things with is at least as important as what you discover© Mike Quinn

Q: What would you say is the most exciting place you have ever lived, or traveled to, for insects?
Answer: That is a something of an unfair question [I was addressing folks in Austin, Texas and thought maybe that location was the answer he was looking for], but....I'm not sure that I can point to a particular geographic place. I think for me it is a matter of specific experiences, isolated encounters with animals that leave the most vivid impressions and that I can recall most intensely. It is not always an insect that figures into the picture, either. A couple days ago when we were at the Brackenridge Field Laboratory and we came across a coral snake, very suddenly, right in the middle of the road. Before we traveled here I had contemplated what kinds of potentially dangerous creatures we might stumble upon, and a coral snake was not even on my radar. I don't see snakes very often, anywhere, let alone one so colorful and venomous. That got my adrenaline pumping, and I will not soon forget the experience. The short answer is that I can find wonderful creatures anywhere, from my backyard to a southern swamp. Yes, some places may be more exotic than others, but they are all what you make of them.

Please feel free to share your own questions in comments and I will periodically make a blog post to answer them.

Do Insects Feel Pain? A Revealing Question

At some point in their career, every entomologist will be asked the question "do insects feel pain?" A surprising amount of research has gone into answering that question or, in some instances, unrelated research has provided insight into that query. My answer to that question has more to do with the person asking it, and as far as I know, that is a unique response.

Questioning the capacity for insects to feel pain says more about the one who intends to inflict it.

As one who interacts with the public more than many entomologists, it has become evident that while some people have no qualms about ending the life of an insect, even advocating extremely inhumane techniques ("Kill it with fire!" is a common reply to someone else's social media request to identify a household insect), there is an increasing tolerance for insects, even in the home. If the creature is unwelcome, there is now often a plea for a non-lethal means of dealing with the uninvited arthropod.

The flipside of this more empathetic response to "bugs" is the question of whether insects feel pain. The obvious, hoped-for answer is "no, they don't." The person asking is then relieved of guilt for harming or killing any insect in the past, present, and future. So, while the new trend is for more people, especially women, to seek humane methods of insect control, many people still look for examples of how insects do not deserve empathy and compassion as a way to vindicate their own behavior towards other organisms.

The bottom line in the question of whether insects feel pain is thus the unspoken question of whether killing insects and spiders falls into the category of cruelty to animals. Legally, it would be difficult to argue that insects, being animals, are exempt from that crime. Obviously, this is not the case, and I do not see that implied public consensus changing anytime soon. Swatting a mosquito could be an act of "self-defense," though, considering the atrocious diseases that those biting flies can transmit.

Ok, so you want a scientific answer? Most entomologists I know resort to the short answer that insects do not have "pain receptors" like higher animals. This means they have no nerve cells devoted to the perception of pain. Insects can sense heat and cold, for example, and various chemical and tactile stimuli, but not pain as we would define it.

Is the wasp feeling no pain while being killed by the spider?

The fact that many insects, and other arthropods, willingly sacrifice limbs and other body parts in order to survive predator attacks is a testament to how apparently immune to pain they can be. A missing leg hardly slows down a grasshopper. Tattered wings rarely encumber a butterfly finishing its mission of mating and procreation.

As a colleague and fellow blogger noted in his own treatment of this question, another important aspect of physical pain is the emotional distress that comes with it. Ascribing human emotions to non-human organisms is known in the scientific community as "anthropomorphism," and is considered a big no-no when attempting to conduct unbiased research and observations. So ingrained is the concept of avoiding anthropomorphism that we now have to question whether the unemotional conclusions we draw in animal behavior studies are really the correct ones. The truth probably lies somewhere in the middle.

The fact that people are asking questions like this that leave open the possibility that insects and other arthropods are sentient beings is a hopeful sign, regardless if that belief is based in reality. We could certainly stand a little more empathy for other living things. Then again, look how we treat other members of our own species.

Source: Ballenger, Joe, 2016. "Do insects feel pain?," Ask an Entomologist.

From My Inbox

Once the general public gets wind of your expertise in entomology, you are invariably inundated with requests for identifications of specimens, images, even fuzzy recollections that are then related to you. The digital age has made entomologists and naturalists much more accessible, and I believe that is a very good thing. Exterminators have always been accessible. It is also a good thing for those of us answering inquiries because it often presents a challenge, or a window to species from faraway lands, or in some cases represents a new or potentially invasive species.

Semanotus amethystinus (Amethyst Cedar Borer) from "Sara S." in Portland, Oregon via What'sThatBug.com

One of my regular "clients" is the webmaster for What's That Bug?, a very popular website that receives submissions from all over the globe. Daniel Marlos, who runs the site, started it on a relative lark as an example of pop culture. He quickly found he was filling a huge void, but had little knowledge of entomology himself. Over the years that has changed dramatically, and Daniel can now identify most common critters. He is better at identifying Australian insects and arachnids than I am. Still, he gets stumped every once in awhile, and will e-mail me for help.

Much of the time, I am clueless, too, but I enjoy the investigative work of coming up with an answer if I can. Take this submission from "Sweetpea" in Montreal, Quebec, Canada, for example. I did not recognize this longhorned beetle and thought it might be something exotic that found its way there in the fashion of the notorious Asian Longhorned Beetle. A quick search of Bugguide.net proved it was actually the native "Linden Borer," Saperda vestita. I learned something in the process of helping.

Here's another example. My response to Daniel is under the images.

"Daniel:

We were both wrong! You thought it was a clerid or a tenebrionid. I thought for certain it was a spider beetle (Anobiidae: Ptininae or Ptinidae). Turns out it is a longhorn! Here:

Bugguide.net

Crazy. I knew it looked familiar, but it took looking in an old, dusty copy of Essig’s Insects and Mites of Western North America to find a figure that matched.

Would love to share these images on Bugguide and maybe in a blog post. Thanks.

Eric"

Sometimes I even get forwarded e-mails as the chain of included experts expands even longer. One of my friends in Arizona sent me the image below that depicts an ovipositing female bee fly at the Gilbert Water Ranch near Phoenix, Arizona.

© Laurie Nessel

I am increasingly impressed and delighted by how observant and curious many people are about the invertebrate world.

Occasionally, friends will simply share images they think I would enjoy, like this male Anise Swallowtail photographed by David M. Elwonger on the summit of Signal Butte in the Pike National Forest here in Colorado. I had not been aware that the species occurred east of the Rockies prior to his e-mail to me.

© David M. Elwonger

Please, keep the proverbial cards and letters coming, there is no such thing as a stupid question or unimportant observation. At the very least, if it is important to you, then it is important to me, too.

Another Honor

Last week I discovered that I was one of the top fifty (50) experts at AllExperts.com for the year 2009. Not that About.com, the parent of AllExperts, bothered to tell me or anything. Still, I'm flattered.

The ranking is probably based on the scores given to the expert by satisfied users of this "aska service," divided by the number of questions you answer. Considering the number of doctors, lawyers, and information technology wizards that must entertain thousands of questions each year, I'm proud to help elevate entomology to this level of prominence. Keep the questions coming, folks.