Ask an Entomologist

So. Short and easy question.

Why do people love the periodical cicadas?

So, I really like this question from Zach Weinersmith:

He later followed up the query with a further clarification:

This is a fantastic question, because there’s a lot of REALLY weird biology when it comes to how lineages diverge. Sometimes, it happens gradually. Sometimes, it happens instantly.

Sometimes, animals can even undergo speciation while still mating with each other.

Let’s start breaking this down…

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Honeybees and humans have an ancient relationship. There’s evidence of honeybees being kept in clay pots in North Africa roughly 10,000 years ago. On Twitter, we’ve even discussed the bizarre twists and turns of how honeybees were studied up until the 1800s. We’ve never discussed how honeybees became a central part of our agricultural system, one which we take great care to work around.

Of all the topics related to honeybee biology, the one which seems to have justifiably captured the most concern is how pesticides effect honeybees-or, honeybee toxicology to put it in the language a scientist would use. Although honeybees are more or less livestock, the issues which harm them also harm the more vulnerable bees. For better or worse, honeybees are the model for bee biology (although this is quickly changing).

We’ve been studying this for years, with the USDA leading the charge of figuring out how insecticides harm honeybees. If you’re interested in the topic of bees and pesticides, it makes sense to know a little bit of the history about how we began studying honeybee toxicology.

A huge portion of this story revolves Lonnie Standifer-a black entomologist who was in charge of the Carl Hayden bee research center in Tucson Arizona in the 1970s.