A love of bugs led Chris Marshall to take a white-knuckle flight into a remote South American rainforest. With an eye on cataloging the diversity of these rich ecosystems before they vanish, he returned with species never seen by scientists.
Midges, together with millions of other Cretaceous insect species, may well have landed the “final knockout blow” to the giant reptiles by infecting them with deadly parasites and pathogens, Poinar and coauthor Roberta Poinar explain in their richly descriptive narrative.
Food is only the most obvious way contaminants enter the human body.
There are two kinds of entomologists: those who love insects intellectually and those who love them viscerally. Without a doubt, Chris Marshall fits into the second category.
In Andrew Moldenke’s forest ecology course, students get the BPGT acronym drilled into their heads from Day One. Oregon’s fabled old-growth forests owe their existence to insect digestion, and the professor wants to make sure nobody forgets it.
The astounding array of seafloor organisms — brittlestars and bivalves, marine worms and sea pens, cold-water corals and sponge species by the score — plays a vital role in ocean systems by providing food and shelter for finfish and shellfish.