Putting Organisms in Their Places
by Carole VanSickle
EMAIL
THIS
PRINTABLE
VERSION
Intro/ Ecological Imbalance
| The Value of Little Green Things/ Toward Predicting Function
| Beetlemania/ Knowledge is Strength
Searching for Diamonds in the Rough
Beetlemania
Not all organisms of concern to taxonomists — and to society — are microorganisms. For example, UGA’s McHugh and his students have identified 56 new beetle species in the past two years. Working with colleagues at Brigham Young University and Louisiana State University, the group analyzes the relationships between species to improve the classification system and to better understand any single organism’s environmental effects.McHugh devotes his efforts largely to one beetle “superfamily” called Cucujoidea, which harbors a vast assortment of new species of stomach yeasts that McHugh helped discover. The yeast aids the beetles with digestion and may play a role in the species’ evolution as well, he said. Most of his work, however, focuses on identifying and classifying new beetles, and he travels all over the world to find them. “One in every five known species on Earth is a beetle,” he said. “This kind of work is exactly what I love to do.”
This kind of work also can have great practical value. “In a port like Savannah,” McHugh said, “if a ship arrives with insects on board, the inspectors need to know whether that ship should be allowed to enter the United States, be fumigated or be turned away. If there is no one who can identify the insects, we cannot know if the strange critters may ultimately wipe out North American forests.”
Like all beetles, the "Pleasing fungus beetle" or Pselaphacus nigropunctatus (above) looks very different in its immature, larval stage and its adult, winged phase. Some kinds of beetles, like the one at the top, do not have full names yet because the identification process is so complicated. Photos courtesy of Mark Farmer.
Knowledge is Strength
Although most chytrids are not pathogens, most euglenoids are not killers, and most beetles will not deforest the continental United States, understanding the ways in which organisms interact with each other, as well as with their environment, may help understand potential threats and solutions.
“Knowing something about an organism’s evolutionary history can help us understand and work with its present biology, which is what we hope to do with euglenoids and related organisms,” Farmer said. “The relatively gentle euglena from high-school science class may hold the key to the cures for diseases that infect millions of people each year.”
For more information on this article and on the national PEET conference at UGA in September 2006, contact Mark Farmer at farmer@cb.uga.edu, Joe McHugh at jmchugh@bugs.ent.uga.edu, or David Porter at porter@plantbio.uga.edu.
Intro/ Ecological Imbalance
| The Value of Little Green Things/ Toward Predicting Function
| Beetlemania/ Knowledge is Strength
For comments or for information please e-mail: rcomm@uga.edu
To contact the webmaster please email: ovprweb@uga.edu
