Believe it or not, the world of pollinators is filled with enough sex, flirtation, and intrigue to fill a telenovela. That’s why we turned to our Myooze, and head bug man, entomologist Dino Martins for a lesson on the birds and the bees. The National Geographic Emerging Explorer, who is an expert in pollination, and a talented artist to boot, recently sat down with MYOO to share his insights on the surprising crossover between love in the bug world and ours.  –S. Sweeney

MYOO: Tell us about the moment you first fell in love with the world of bugs?

Dino Martins: Among my earliest memories are watching insects. Even as a young child, I was fascinated to insects and drawn to them. As a child I spent hours following individual insects, carefully watching them, drawing them, just like many children today spend hours watching television. I am still doing this today. In many ways, I fall in love with bugs over and over again each day. Every moment I spend watching insects is a precious gift. And each moment I spend with insects yields insights into an intricate and beautiful world.

MYOO: As someone who has specialized in pollination and pollinators and studied them all across the world, what is it that is so crucial about the act of pollinating?

Dino: Pollinators truly make the world go round. Basically pollinators keep much of the planet running. Flowering plants are the basis of most terrestrial habitats, and some two-thirds of them are dependent on wild insect pollinators. That’s over 200,000 different species of plants! The relationships between insects and flowers are at once ancient, beautifully intricate and correspondingly fragile. Nowhere is this diversity of species and partnerships more evident than in tropical forests, savannahs and even drylands. Thousands upon thousands of species, most of them as yet undescribed and many of them rare or threatened, call these habitats their home.

“The relationships between insects and flowers are at once ancient, beautifully intricate and correspondingly fragile.”

MYOO: In some ways, one could argue that successful pollination starts with sex appeal. Can you give us a few examples of some of the characteristics an insect of your choice would find sexy?

Dino: Hmmm… this is a tough one to answer…

Yes, pollination is all about sex. Plants can’t move around and so they manipulate insects into carrying their male gametes (pollen grains) between flowers for them. It depends on the kind of relationship between the insect and the flower. For those that are highly specialized and co-evolved, ‘sexiness’ would be a good fit between the pollinator and the flower that it pollinates.

For example there are moths with super-long tongues that pollinate orchids with equally long spurs. The orchid keeps the most concentrated nectar just out of reach of the moth. This forces the moth to reach deeper into the flower, thereby pollinating it.

From a flower’s perspective, ‘sexiness’ is faithfulness and reliability. So flowers are looking for many of the same things that we are in some ways. This is because if a pollinator visits many different kinds of flowers it could potentially deposit the wrong kind of pollen on the stigma of a flower. This is disastrous for the flower, as it can’t reproduce this way. Good sex for flowers is sex (i.e. cross-pollination) with a different flower of the same species. Bad sex is sex with yourself (i.e. inbreeding). Plants have all kinds of elaborate strategies to ensure that they don’t suffer from ‘bad sex’, and pollinators make this happen.

MYOO: Valentine’s Day is just as much about those who have found love as it is about the community who is still looking and hoping for love. Do pollinators have the same challenges as we do to finding the right mates?

Dino: Yes, pollinators face a lot of different challenges. The first one is physically locating a flower. Some flower species only bloom for brief periods, just once a year or even for just a single night.

Forests, grasslands and even deserts are vast and complex places and pollinators have to navigate these environments and efficiently locate the right kinds of flowers to feed from. Thanks to co-evolution, flowers entice insects and other pollinators with elaborate sexy colourful displays and perfumes (scents).

Insects are able to detect and follow these signals. But that’s only half the problem solved. Once an insect has located a flower it often has to deal with complex structures and navigate it’s way past all sorts of tricks that the flower may have in place to prevent it being exploited by insects that would rob it and not provide any pollination in return. Orchids are among the most manipulative of flowers, engaging in everything from physical assault to strange sexual mimicry (where flowers resemble female insects and lure males who ‘mate’ with them!).

MYOO: Can you explain what the world might look like if pollinators died off?

Dino: This would be a pretty dire and difficult to imagine scenario. Imagine a world without new wildflowers, fruits or seeds. Entire ecosystems would simply collapse. The cascade effects would be disastrous for the global economy. Can you picture life without chocolate? I certainly can’t. Cocoa is pollinated by two highly specialized groups of midges. No Midges = No Chocolate. No pollinators = No Food.

A world without pollinators is unimaginable. Sadly, there are parts of the world where this has already happened or is happening. Habitat destruction, through farming that destroys natural habitats and chemicals that poison bees are contributing to this situation. There are parts of China where pollination of fruit trees is done by women armed with paintbrushes. In other places (including parts of Europe and the USA), pollinators are managed commercially and farmers pay money to rent/buy the services of managed honeybees, bumblebees and other insects. Farmers in Africa find this hard to believe when I tell them about it.

Africa is blessed with an abundance and diversity of pollinators. We need to understand, conserve and restore pollinators in all farming systems, be they large or small-scale, across the planet.

One direct, yet under-appreciated link between natural habitats and sustainable agriculture is through pollination. Many crops in East Africa, and in other parts of the world, require pollination. Most pollinators are wild insects. Saving pollinators justifies conservation of small species-rich habitats, such as forest patches, and contributes to food security and rural livelihoods of the communities.

“From a flower’s perspective, ‘sexiness’ is faithfulness and reliability. So flowers are looking for many of the same things that we are in some ways.”

MYOO: If you were an insect what would you want to be, and why?

Dino: This is hard to answer. There are so many different insects through whose eyes I would like to be able to see the world.

If I had to choose one I would say that I would like to be a bee somewhere in the bush of northern Kenya. I would like to be a young worker bee in the bush after it has rained and the landscape is bright, hopeful and draped with flowers. I would like to feel what it is to wake up in a hive brimming with joy and expectation. To warm myself in the first gentle rays of the sunshine then venture forth in search of nectar and pollen. I would like to feel the softness and sweetness of flowers that open up and I am the first, and perhaps the only bee, to ever visit. To know all the intricate details of navigation, friendship, cooperation and love that makes up a colony of wild honeybees surviving in the African bush as they have done for millennia would be truly sublime.

MYOO: Any advice for catching bugs?

Dino: Watching is better than catching. If you must catch them, say to get them out of your house, use a jar or a small net and handle them gently. Remember that some insects can sting or bite, so be careful. If you are interested in observing and perhaps studying bugs, you can make useful contributions to science and conservation by documenting insects, even just in your own backyard, and sharing this information with local naturalists and entomologists. There are so many insects, so many things to study and so little time that most entomologists would gladly welcome some extra pairs of hands!

MYOO: Who are your heroes/ influences?

Dino: I have been deeply privileged to have the support and encouragement of many different people. Among scientists, my heroes include Professor E. O Wilson, Dr. Richard Leakey, Dame Miriam Rothschild and Professor Wangari Maathai.

Professor E. O. Wilson is one of the leading biologists in the world. I had read many of his books before I got to meet him at Harvard where I completed my PhD last year. He has been a tremendous inspiration and encouraging person, and I will always treasure his recent advice to me: “Keep looking at insects in Africa as this is something that only you can do as well as you do…”

Dr. Richard Leakey is one of my heroes in science and conservation. I am humbled and amazed at his dedication and determination in both science and conservation. Again I am privileged to call Dr. Leakey a friend and am currently working as a post-doctoral fellow at the Stony Brook Turkana Basin Institute that he founded (www.turkanabasin.org).

The late Dame Miriam Rothschild is someone that I would have loved to meet. Her work with fleas and other parasites is legendary among biologists. Her passion for organisms that most people would find less-than-attractive was inspirational. Her lifelong dedication to science and the creatures that she studied produced some of the most important biological discoveries related to parasites. I have thoroughly enjoyed reading her books and articles and remain inspired by her work.

The late Prof. Wangari Maathai was a friend and hero in Kenya. Her passion for forests and nature was inspirational. Her stand against corrupt, violent and oppressive regimes was a ray of hope for many young Kenyans, including myself, during some rather dark days. Wangari Maathai won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2004. One of my favourite quotes from her is: “We owe it to the present and future generations of all species to rise up and walk!”

My foster parents, Joe and Sarah Ellen Mamlin, have been a source of support, encouragement and love for many years. Without them I don’t think that I would have gotten to where I am today. We go walking in the forest whenever we can, and share in the joy and wonder at the beauty and detail of a bird, flower or humble insect.

I am honoured to work with hundreds of young naturalists, other scientists and people from all over the world. For example, in Kenya I chair the Insect Committee of Nature Kenya, the East Africa Natural History Society. It is filled with passionate people from all backgrounds and walks of life united in their love for science and conservation.

Most of all, I feel that it is to the Insects that I owe most of my thanks and source of inspiration. I have now spent so many wonderful years watching them and plan to continue doing so for the rest of my life. They are the true heroes of this planet. We are their guests, quite literally, with our mere 6 million year history in the face of their 400 million year journey in the story of life. We all need to appreciate them more and learn to listen and love.

“Plants have all kinds of elaborate strategies to ensure that they don’t suffer from ‘bad sex’, and pollinators make this happen.”

MYOO: What sorts of projects are you currently working on?

Dino: I am currently working on a wide range of insect related projects. I am studying bees, ants, termite, grasshoppers and other insects in various parts of Africa.

I am also working pollinator conservation with communities around Kenya. This includes working with farmers and developing ways of linking sustainable agriculture and conservation. Currently working on finishing up books on bees, dragonflies and butterflies too!

MYOO: Anything on your bug bucket list?

Dino: Too many to list here. But I would love to see Birdwings (the largest butterflies in the world) in the wild. They occur in parts of tropical Asia and Papua New Guinea.

Finding new and unusual species of bees and ants is always exciting and I would like to be able to study more of these in remote areas of Africa that haven’t been much explored by entomologists.

 

—Dino Martins is an entomologist, and a naturalist in Eldoret, Kenya. Learn more about his work below and don’t miss his amazing artwork in his MYOO Bug Field Guide to Dating.

www.turkanabasin.org

http://www.nationalgeographic.com/explorers/bios/dino-martins/

http://newswatch.nationalgeographic.com/author/dinomartins/

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rmL_XTrPOMw

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OStFtBAPqAk

http://dududiaries.wildlifedirect.org/