Advantage: Photography

This month I took up digital photography. That may be an overstatement. I know nothing about photography period. I wanted to blog, though, and images help to make a blog visually appealing and successful in attracting a readership. A friend was encouraging, to the point of lending me her PowerShot SD1000, one of the subcompact “Elph” series that Canon puts out. I am amazed by what close-up capabilities the tiny camera has, and how easy it is to take a reasonably good image. I had been collecting insect specimens up until now, but looking at things through a camera lens (or at least the LED screen) has been perhaps even more rewarding.

I got to thinking that there is much more of an advantage to taking images rather than specimens:

• You don’t need permits to take images.
• You can take images of wildlife and people (you can’t “collect” those!).
• Storage of images takes a lot less room than storage of an insect collection.
• It takes less time to prepare an image than a specimen (that may change as I get more sophisticated).
• You can share images (I can’t pin an insect specimen to my blog).
• Photography makes you more observant.
• Images of living organisms are more colorful and robust than faded, withered dead specimens.
• You can record behaviors in a photograph.
• You can record habitat in an image.
• Carpet beetle larvae can’t eat my hard drive.

I decided that while I was enjoying my friend’s camera, I needed to get one of my own. Boy, did I ever get a lot of advice on that decision! Well, I did ask for it. Some photographer friends recommended getting a used, refurbished DSLR and a versatile lens, the equivalent of “old” 35 millimeter cameras. Others endorsed their own tried-and-true equipment of the point and shoot variety. Given my budget restraints, and lack of experience with cameras, I opted for a Canon SX10, a “super zoom” model that gives me the option of manual controls and settings when I get to the point of understanding them.

I highly recommend taking up photography in the digital age. It is easy, fun, as cheap or expensive as you want to make it, and very rewarding. Don’t get me wrong, there is still a need for scientific collecting of actual specimens. I feel I have largely done my share of that for my lifetime, and I now look forward to contributing to the brotherhood of naturalists and biophiles as well as the scientific community.

Enemy Mentality

Americans seem to classify insects and other arthropods in one of two categories: a pest to be annihilated with chemicals, or something to be devoured on the television show Fear Factor (or eaten by Bear Grylls on Man vs. Wild). Why does the media dwell on fear and loathing instead of fascination and appreciation? I suppose the answer should be obvious.

There is a great deal of money to be made by reinforcing the irrational fear of insects, spiders, and other arthropods. An educated consumer knows that he or she need not always reach for the can of insecticide at the mere appearance of an unidentified invertebrate. Household pesticide manufacturers and extermination services would undoubtedly lose business if the majority of their customers knew the truth about insects, and were able to identify which ones are a real source of concern and not merely a nuisance.

Further, our American society likes everything in black and white terms. Something is either “good,” or it is “bad.” We are uncomfortable with gray areas. We also seem to need motivation in the form of an adversary or foe, something to fight against. Insects and spiders are easily framed as villains. Maybe we can’t control what happens to us in the workplace, or maybe we are having a hard time controlling an unruly son or daughter, but gosh darn it we will control the cockroaches if it kills us.

I am often motivated to change public attitudes about insects because I firmly believe it will help dissolve our overall enemy mentality. Surely, if we can stop killing insects needlessly, we can stop killing each other, too.

Spider Scare in the News

Last week a news story broke about a potentially dangerous neotropical (New World tropics) spider that stowed away in a crate of bananas from Latin America and ended up in a grocery store in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Credit the media for sticking with the story and getting it right for a change, successfully quelling what could have been needless widespread public hysteria.

Two experts in the case contradicted each other’s identification of the arachnid, and because the specimen was dispatched, there was no way to verify its identity. There are several species in the spider family Ctenidae, collectively known as “wandering spiders” because they do not spin webs to catch prey. Their large size and often aggressive behavior is enough to intimidate a person, regardless of how venomous they may be. The genus Phoneutria includes at least some species that can, rarely, deliver a lethal bite. Species in the harmless genus Cupiennius, however, can be easily mistaken for their deadlier cousins.

Richard S. Vetter and Stefan Hillebrecht addressed this dilemma in the cover story of the summer, 2008 issue of American Entomologist, a journal of the American Entomological Society. The bottom line from the article is that without close examination of a specimen, it is unlikely that an individual spider can be correctly identified. The better news is that fatalities from bites of Phoneutria are very rare, even for “at risk” populations such as the elderly and infants. It is largely one’s immune system response, rather than the toxicity of venom, that determines whether a bite will result in no reaction, a mild response, or a severe trauma.

Many of the reader response comments on the Yahoo version of the story centered on the perceived failure of our government inspection services. Dangerously venomous tropical spiders do not routinely infiltrate our nation, however, and the large volume of foreign shipments to the U.S. precludes comprehensive inspections. It is the price we pay for a “free market” where goods pass unfettered across borders. Collectively, through our demand for tropical fruits and houseplants, we consumers have determined that risks like spiders are an acceptable hazard.

On the Radio

I awoke this morning to my usual radio station, but the DJs were bantering about “giant mosquitoes” that one of them was seeing in his house recently. I knew immediately that what he was referring to were harmless “crane flies” in the family Tipulidae. I also knew they were emerging in fair numbers because I photographed this pair (female above, male below) as they rested on a pillar at the University of Arizona campus during the recent Tucson Festival of Books.

I got up, went to the phonebook, and found the number for the station. As luck would have it, I got right through to Blake and Jennie, and told them what I knew.

”Are they good dog food?” asked Blake, “because my dog sure loves to eat ‘em.” We all got a collective chuckle out of that, and I replied that “They won’t do your dog any harm, let’s put it that way.” We hung up, and I went back to bed for a minute to hear what would happen next. Well, they played our conversation on the air, mystery solved.

I’d really enjoy doing a regular “spot” on a drive time radio show, answering questions about insects and arachnids from the listening public. Meanwhile, you can meet my over-the-phone friends Jennie and Blake at the website for 92.9 the Mountain, KWMT FM in Tucson.