It’s Bugs’ World and We’re Just Living In It with Jessica Ware

Introducing Jessica Ware

0:00Nagin, I was, like, weirdly attracted to these bugs that we were talking about. And I'm, like, emotionally connected to them. Ooh, how did that happen? Coming up on StarTalk.

0:14Welcome to StarTalk, your place in the universe where science and pop culture collide. StarTalk begins right now. This is StarTalk. Neil deGrasse Tyson, your personal astrophysicist. And I got with me, Nagin Farsad. Nagin, welcome back. Oh, my God, hello. I love having you. I love being here on this hot summer day. Yeah, excellent. You know what we're going to talk about today?

0:44Tell me. Bugs. Oh, so delightful. Literally love it. When a bug lands on me, I just think, oh, this is great. I love a bug. Well, I, not being an expert, but I work in an institution that contains them. Not only experts, but also bugs that they study. Back for your third time on StarTalk, Jessica Ware. Jessica, welcome back. Thank you for having me. Can't get enough. I'm excited to talk to you. And one of those times we talked about cicadas.

1:14Yeah. Because you're, like, one of the world's experts on these ugly bugs. I think it's pronounced beautiful and charismatic. I mispronounced it. I mispronounced it. Did you say they were charismatic? Yeah.

1:28Colorful? Check. Sounds beautiful? Check. They do cool things with their genitals? Check. That's charisma. I mean, do they give, like, enlightening stump speeches on the road in national politics? On tree stumps, yes. Ah, I see what I did there? So let me get your whole title here, Division Chair in the Division of Invertebrate Zoology. So these are spineless animals. Exactly. Well, the people in my division or the insects in them.

1:58Or little, little, little. No, no. I call it. I jest. What you study. Yes. And you're a curator of protists, basal hexapoda, and non-holometabola. Yeah. Did I pronounce all that right? I would say non-holometabola, but you could say— Oh, holometabola. Yeah. I like that. I have no idea what any of that is. Yeah. But they're creatures on this earth. Exactly. So there are insects that have complete metamorphosis. You know the story, the hungry caterpillar. And it goes from an egg, then there's a caterpillar, then there's a pupil stage,

2:31where there's a complete rearrangement of its internal and external anatomy, and it emerges as a butterfly. That's called complete metamorphosis. There's one group that does it, holometabola. I don't study those. I did not know that's the official term for them. Yeah. That's called holometabola. It's a whole metabola, like it's a complete metabolic change of its body. I don't study those. I study all the ones that don't do that. Oh, you don't either. Non-holometabola. She just described what she doesn't study. Yeah. Yeah. Non-holometabola. So like a baby grasshopper hatches from an egg, and it just is a small version,

3:05and it just molts to a larger and larger size until it's the same size as an adult grasshopper. There's no complete rearrangement of its body. You're also a PI, a principal investigator, the Institute for Comparative Genomics. Comparative. This is one of the jewels in the crown of this institution. It's true. We are able to really understand 400 million years of evolution through the genome, through whole genome sequencing. Cool. And you're a professor in our built-in Gilder Graduate School. Yeah. Loving it. Loving it. Yeah, so you're the one to talk about bugs.

3:37Well, insects. Okay. Bugs are just one kind of insect. Not to be- Don't tell me that. All bugs. No. Not to be that guy. Stop. But also non-holometabola or whatever, just so we're clear. Does she study non-bugs? Okay. Let's just figure this out.

What makes a true bug

3:57What's a bug?

What makes a true bug

3:58So bugs are in the one particular kind of insect, and they're in the order Hemiptera. They're called true bugs. They're the only ones that are actually bugs. All the rest are just different kinds of insects. Dragonflies are dragonflies. Beetles are beetles. Bugs are bugs. They're just a kind of insect, and they all are united because they have a mouth part that's sucking. They have like a little straw. It's so beautiful. A little straw and a little pump to suck up things. So they suck up plant juice mostly, except for the ones that suck up blood.

4:28Yeah. Heroes. Okay. So are bees bugs? They suck up plant nectar. Bees don't. Bees have a tongue. Bees lap up plant nectar. They're like little cats. They're little like cats. I didn't realize that. Their tongue is really long. It looks like if you look at a bee when it's drinking, it actually has a pretty long tongue, and they stick it out, and actually they're just lapping up the nectar. Wait, wait, stop. You have divided yourselves among people who study insects who suck and insects who lick.

5:02Who lick, yeah. That's a category. So you don't study insects who lick? Yeah, no. None of that. I study insects that bite, that chew, and that suck. Wow, you just made a weird exception for that one category of licking. They're dead to me. Okay. I will not.

5:23No.

5:25Just like the holometabola. She's a non-homometabola. She's a non-homometabola. Yeah, non-homometabola. All right. So those are bugs. So how about when I'm outside in a twilight and gnats come around my head? Yeah. They're bugging me. So to me, they're bugs. Yeah. Are gnats bugs? No, they're insects. They're in the order diptera, which are the flies. So gnats are a kind of fly. There's gnats. There's no-see-ums. There's horse flies. There's mosquitoes. We all know mosquitoes. Black flies. And those are all in the order diptera.

5:57They're all flies. Wait, wait. I heard no-see-um, and I didn't believe that was the actual name of an insect. I thought the person was just lying. Yeah. No-see-um. Yeah. And it's all one word. No-see-um. No-see-um. Because you know what? You don't see them. You don't see them. No, you don't see them. Finally, you name something after what it looks like. Yeah. Because none of that other stuff, we don't know what you're talking about until you explain it. Yeah. The dragonflies, I mean, they don't really look like a dragon. They do fly. I'll give you that. Right? It's in the name. It's for the name.

6:28They do have like a dragon-vibe-ish look, though. Wait a minute. We eat them. Grasshoppers, they're often eating grass, and they hop. Descriptive. That's two that we know of that are very descriptive. Wait, I bet you that your official name for a grasshopper has neither of those two in it. It's true. It's orthoptera.

6:48So there. What's wrong with you guys? I know. So who knew that bugs had an official definition? It's the first I've learned of this. I'm delighted to be enlightened this way. And I notice you have tattoos on your body. Don't tell me that they're what you study. I have a dragonfly, which is what I study. But I also have, well, I have a bug. A true, oh, I have a true bug. I have a hemiptera right here. Oh, true bug. With a sucking mouth part, because it's a sucking mouth part. And then I have a tiny rat flea that's wearing a circus hat and riding on a penny farthing.

7:21Right here. And none of those lick. And none of those are lickers. Yeah. Got you. What accounts for, even though they're all different from each other, so I don't mean to say they're the same, but they're very different from us.

Why insects succeed

7:36Yeah.

Why insects succeed

7:37What makes them so successful on Earth? Well, part of their success is the time. So they've been around for a really long time. Flying insects have been around for 400 million years. So they've had a lot of time to rapidly radiate into all the different niches on Earth. So they just predate dinosaurs. Yeah, predate by quite a bit. Oh, by 100 million years. Yeah. Yeah, by quite a bit. Like none of the cool dinosaurs that you might see on the fourth floor, they weren't even on the scene yet when dragonflies were already flying.

8:06The first to fly, so they were able to kind of conquer that. Dragonflies are OG flyers? OG. They're the OGs. Wow. Yeah, before birds, before bats, before pterosaurs. So you realize in the sci-fi novel Dune, they've got, it's another planet, of course, and everything's different, and they're flying machines whose wings duplicate what a dragonfly wings do. So it's not a rotocopter, and it's not an airfoil, but they look like dragonflies.

8:38Yeah. So he must have been very impressed with them, just as you are. I mean, it's the original design, right? It's the bow plan, the template, right? Most insect wings follow the same idea. There's something slightly different that dragonflies and damselflies do with the way that their muscles attach to their wings inside of their body. But in general, the wings are the same. The forewing kind of has air that passes over it. It goes and it affects the wind that passes over the hindwing. And what were you doing just before you arrived at my office here? Oh, we were looking at dragonfly brains, brains.

9:09How big are their brains compared to their bodies? So you know, like when you look at a dragonfly, their head just looks like giant eyes. That's kind of the story. So their eyes take up almost everything, and then they have a teeny, teeny, tiny brain. So they have a mushroom body, which we think is for memory, so they can remember some things. And they have a tiny central cortex, and then most of their head is just optic lobes, because they're highly visual predators. So seeing is the biggest important part of what they do. And I mean, what can they remember?

9:40Like, can they remember, you know what I mean? Are they like, I can remember what I ate for lunch? Or are they like, I can remember, like, my family's story? Yeah, that's a good question. We think, maybe, what if you were territorial? And you had to remember where your territory was. Would your brain be bigger than if you weren't territorial? Because some are territorial and some are not. Or some, like, never leave the pond from which they emerge. And some migrate across the ocean. So if you're migratory, would your brain be bigger than ones that never leave the area where they're born?

10:10So the eyes of these flying insects are completely different from human eyes, optically, right? And famously, they're portrayed as, you know, in cartoons, I guess. That's where I get my entomology from. Where they're looking through, and you see, like, 100 versions of whatever it is they're looking at. They've seen it for house flies and dragonflies. Do they have the same kind of eyes? Yeah, they're basically the same idea, although the number of omatidia varies. There's an omatidia, which has a lens, and it has photoreceptor cells. And there are lots of those little images, but we think that they get stitched together in the brain

10:43and kind of make one composite image that probably they're seeing. Is that the same for butterflies and moths? We think it's pretty much the same across insects. But the difference is that some insects that, like, have invested a lot in sight, like praying mantises, that's one. Dragonflies are another. Their vision is probably better than a butterfly or a moth. And then all the, and these, like, insects also have, like, eyes that sort of, like, stick out. They're, like, they, and does that mean they see top and bottom at the same time? Or, like, what does that mean? No, that's true. That's such a good observation because the shape of the eye and the way that the omatidia,

11:16which are the lens plus the photoreceptor, the photocell, the way that they kind of project out, stick out, that actually affects whether they can see above them, a little bit below them, a little bit behind them. So dragonfly eyes are really globular, and that allows them to see a little bit behind them in case there's a predator coming or there's food or a mate. And they can see out laterally and they can see in front of them and a little bit above them. Except for, like, they do something with sex that's a little bit weird, and males grab the female behind the back of her head. And when he does so, sometimes he steps on her omatidia,

11:48so she loses a lot of her vision in the back part of her head. What? And that's built into their process? It's what they do. Yeah. What is the evolutionary purpose of doing that? Well, if he holds on to her, then she doesn't fly away from him, and then he can ensure paternity. Got you. So getting pregnant has higher evolutionary value than losing some of your sight in the back, I think. Because not everything is good. But it just has to be less bad than something else.

12:20Right, right, right. If your fitness is even a tiny bit higher because you pass more genes on for the next generation selection. Yeah, it'll accumulate and then... So you can tell when a dragonfly is female because she's the one that's always, like, turning around fully to see what's happening. She does this.

12:39It is sad that old gals, sometimes the back of their eyes are really busted up. When I woke up this morning, I didn't think this is what I'd be talking about. Also, I didn't think I would have an emotional response to this, but I feel really bad and weird for old gal dragonfly. The matriarch is blind, isn't it? Yeah, exactly.

13:07I'm Joel Cherico, and I support StarTalk on Patreon. This is StarTalk with Neil deGrasse Tyson.

Anatomy and ancient origins

13:15So if they go back 400 million years, the Cambrian explosion of life is not that much earlier than that. 150 million years or so? So when I look at insects, they all look so different from one another. What is true among them that's been evolutionarily duplicated in all the insects? Well, really, it's not that it's duplicated. It's that there was a single origin, a single ancestor, and they just all are descendants.

13:49And that, so they all share the same things. Of course, but somebody's going to have the bug eyes first. And then, does that give all the bug eyes? Or did eyes evolve separately to be similar? No, we think that there's a single origin. Convergent evolution, I think you guys call that. Yeah, but I think there's a single origin for eyes, a single origin for wings. And so insects in general have a head, a thorax, and an abdomen. They all have that. The abdomen in general has 10 segments, although there's... Oh, so they're like, they're doing a 10-pack. Doing a 10-pack.

14:19The common ancestor all had a head, a thorax, and an abdomen, and six legs. Got it. Yeah, the basal hexapods, which are the closest relatives to dragonflies and damselflies, they had no wings. They never evolved them. And then, at some point, 400 million years ago, boom, wings. Well, boom. I think that was... I believe that was the sound it made. Pop! I got wings. But you have to learn how to fly. I know. That must be like a real head trip when you're like, suddenly I have these things.

14:50What do they do? I think they were really... What we think is that they were not good flyers in the beginning. Because the ones at first... Like, the sky was empty, right? So you could be as big as you want. There was nothing else really hunting you except for each other. So the first ones that flew were really large. Each wing was like 37 centimeters. They were pretty big. And they were really clumsy. They had really stiff wings. And they were just kind of like, probably not great. But then as the sky filled up with other things, then wings tended to get a lot smaller. And there's a bunch of different parts of the wings for fast flight, for maneuverable flight, for aerodynamics.

15:25And for hovering. Yeah, and for hovering. Because dragonflies hover. Yeah, I mean, they're not as good as hoverflies or for some other... There are some... For the pesky entomologists that's listening to this, they'll say they're not as good at hovering as some other things. But they can stay in one spot for a little while. Right, right. So, and then it's something like crickets that can't fly or... Well, crickets can't fly. They're just more like glide. They do like a little hop and they kind of glide. Right. So, is that just because... Like, is that like they started with that evolutionary thing, but then they just didn't go forward with it?

15:58They were like, hmm, we don't really need that model. Yeah, I mean, they have the ingredients in the kitchen, right? They have the tools in the toolbox. But they're really focused on jumping. Dragonflies are going everywhere. They're going around the whole globe. So, their wings are kind of designed for long-distance flight. Wait a minute. You're saying they got big because no one was in the air to eat them? Like a bird or something? Well, they... So, there's a couple reasons why we think they got big. But the reason why they were able to be big and clumsy was because there was nothing else in there related to...

16:30What's this I remember about... Because there was a time when there was much more oxygen in our air. And insects breathe through their skin, right? Not skin. Well, they have little spiracles. They have little holes that open and close and let air go in. And we used to think it was just that, like, high oxygen, so they were bigger. That's what I read, like, long ago. Well, people have even, like, reared dragonflies in high-oxygen environments. And they did end up significantly bigger than if they hadn't reared them in the high-oxygen environments. But recent work, just, like, hot off the presses this spring, not from our lab, but from collaborators in odinatology,

17:05they showed that they actually have giant kind of air sacs in their body. So, they actually held air with them. And it really wasn't necessarily because the oxygen was really high that they were able to be big. It's that they actually were able to carry their own air with them. Oh, it's like a built-in, like, oxygen tank. Yeah, they had their own iron love. Oh, yeah, that's nice. What did you call that field? Odinatology, yeah. Odinata is? That's dragonflies and damselflies. Yes. And so, if you study odinata, you're an odinatologist.

17:36Yes. And your field is odinatology. Got it. Yeah. I'd never heard of that before. So, that's nice. If you Google it, you often get dentistry things. Because there's another word that's related to dentistry that sounds very similar. So, just like etymology, which is words, and entomology are similar. That gets confused if you do a quick Google. Yeah. And odontology and odinatology, you'll get those, sometimes you get hits for both. So, be careful. Yeah, yeah. Be careful when you're Googling.

18:07I will totally be careful next time. You might end up thinking that insects have a lot of teeth. Or, look, you want to see a beautiful picture of a dragonfly, and then you get a picture of a root canal. You don't want that. You don't want that. So, insects are all built on a basic model that apparently is highly successful.

Urban insects in New York

18:25I mean, there are more insects in the world than any other kind of animal. That's a true fact. In terms of abundance, that's true. Yeah. And in terms of number of species, also true. Especially given how many species there are, that's the evidence of how successful. Yeah. I mean, there's around the same number of species of dragonflies and damselflies as there are all of mammals. So, if I asked you to name five mammals. I don't like that. Well, I mean, it makes sense, though, because if you live in, I live in New York City, and I don't, like, ever run into, like, a fox or, like, you know, a capybara, but I do, on a daily basis, run into insects.

18:58Yeah. You don't run into a capybara?

19:01I don't either. Both mammals. Both mammals. Yes. You know, so the numbers kind of make sense, because they can infiltrate, like, every world. So, insects, as a branch in the tree of life, has the capacity to be highly fit in almost any environment it encounters. They're like gentrifiers.

19:21They move in, they take over. So, I can move from the countryside into a city, and there are insects in the city. Yeah, we have a lot of insects in New York City. Did any evolve here to be unique? We have a couple of species that we think are unique, like Manhattan. There's, like, a kind of ant. Manhattan ant? Yeah, Manhattan ant, which is a species that was described first here in New York City. There's... Wait, wait, what? Yeah, what is it? Is it, well, I know, is it, like, really well-dressed? Is it, like, is it, like, yeah.

19:51It wears a ball cap a lot, and reads the New York Times. Doesn't know when to wear black, you know. It is black, actually. Is it black? Okay, that makes sense. It has to be, it has to be. It's good for all seasons. I just feel like when they're wearing a black, then, like, no matter what other six they're around. Yeah, yeah, yeah, totally. Is that mostly in Central Park, or is it... No, there's, I mean, you could just walk right down the street, and there's pavement ants that are having battles on the street. There's pavement ants that actually fight each other. You can see dragonflies flying up Fifth Avenue. I mean, this city is actually full of little bits of green space, right?

20:24Whether it's a park, you know, like, a little bits of flowers that you have on your stoop or a tree. So, I used to host a program for PBS called Nova Science Now, a spinoff of Nova. And one of our episodes, we went to the High Line before it was heavily developed. The High Line had been abandoned for decades. It was just railroad tracks up there, okay, in Manhattan. And we go up there, there's, like, grass, and there are insects.

20:55Yeah. And I found a praying mantis. And I'm thinking, how does a praying mantis get into Manhattan? Yeah. What did it... Does it hitch a ride on the ferry? Does it walk across the bridge? Manhattan is an island. It can do all of those things. It can also... They can glide with their wings. They can cling to a bit of bark and go across the Hudson River. They can hitch a ride on my car when I drive in from New Jersey. Like, insects are highly mobile. And even though we think of praying mantises, they're not, like, long-distance flyers, they

21:25get around. Well, and do they not miss their families? You know what I mean? Are they, like, always, like, cutting and running and then just, like, going to Manhattan? I think about that all the time. If a fly gets into my car and then I don't get it out for another hundred miles, then it gets out, that's sad. Yeah, you're like, you live in Pennsylvania now, buddy. Good luck. Not a lot of insects get to see Pennsylvania. Is that what you say to them? I say that sometimes when I'm bringing insects back from the field and I'm bringing them back to this building. I say, you know, not everybody gets to see New York.

21:56This is, like, actually a gift I've given you. Before she puts the pin through its thorax. And murders them. Not a lot of insects get to see New York, right? So, there's a lot of taxa that have been in the Northeast and species that have been in the Northeast for a really long time. And I mean, like, millions and millions of years. Some of them persist. Some of them we have extirpated. There's a lot of things that used to be in Manhattan that are not there now because of us. They're extirpicated. Out. So, when we build environments like the ones that we live in, things that end up being.

22:29Like cities. Things that do well there are things that used to live on cliff faces. That used to live in areas where there was lots of impervious or hard surfaces. Like the rock doves, which we call pigeons. Like rock doves. Like pavement ants. Pavement ants didn't involve. That's a thing. Yeah. It's called pavement ants. Prehistoric pavement. Right? But probably they were just on, like, rocks. That's a kind of ant. Yeah, pavement ant. Rocks, right? Okay. We basically made a rocky environment that a lot of species like to live in. And which ones have we extirpated?

23:00There's a lot, actually. We probably don't even know all the ones that were here because it's not like when people were first settling in Manhattan. And this is millennia ago. They were keeping meticulous logs of biodiversity per se. And then when Manhattan was colonized, you know, I don't think people were either taking meticulous logs. There was a first entomologist, Thomas Say, in North America. He actually did keep records of all the things that were around. So because of that, we know that there are some cicadas that used to be here that are not here.

23:30We know that there's certain species that are no longer here. They couldn't take the heat. The cicadas, ironically, couldn't take the noise. It just felt like it was too much competition with what they were doing. They couldn't make it here, so they couldn't make it anywhere. They couldn't make it anywhere.

23:48I've heard that's true. I've heard that's true. One of the more successful bugs in New York, and I won't have the right word, but cockroaches. Tell me about, so they live with us. Yeah. They didn't create their own world. They are sharing our world and bedbugs. Okay? Yeah. So is this adaptive, I guess? There's only a tiny fraction of cockroaches that live with humans, right? And most of them. Don't tell me that that's only a tiny fraction of all the cockroaches.

24:18Because it feels like all the cockroaches. You know what I mean? When you walk down the streets of Manhattan that night, you're like, they're literally all here. No, there's over 7,000 species in the order Blatodea, which are cockroaches, and the social cockroaches, which are termites. Those are all just one order. And most of them live outside of the human condition. They're living in forests and deserts and rainforests. So there's just a small number that have adapted to live inside of dwellings or to live with garbage and refuse. It's not us. It's the sewage, right?

24:50Like, we make garbage. We make refuge. It's true. They actually don't want to bother you. Yeah, it's not us. You turn on the lights, they scurry. They scurry. And the big ones, like you guys have the big ones? The big, we call them water bugs. Well, they're not water bugs. Because actually, that's a classic landlord thing. They'll tell you you have water bugs so that you don't freak out and make them spray. But water bugs is actually a bug. It's in Hemiptera. It's a totally different insect. A water bug is a completely different insect from a cockroach? Yeah. So if your landlord tells you that you have water bugs...

25:21But it squashes under my foot in exactly the same way. Also, are all landlords entomologists? And I didn't know. I have had landlords... When I had cockroaches, the landlord told me those are water bugs. I was like, surely you just... I am an entomologist. I know this is not a water bug. It's not in Hemiptera. Hello. It's in Blandia. And he said, how do you know you didn't bring them from work? I know. And I was like, I don't actually know. He makes an excellent point. Yes, because it's also possible. Plus, if you go to her section of the museum, there's signs that say, no exterminators.

25:56We do. We actually... We do exterminate in some parts, but we actually have certain rooms that we don't exterminate because we have live... Intentionally live insects in there. The big cockroaches we have, though... Yeah? They are not native to here. The ones that are... The tiny little guys... I grew up with really big ones in Palm Springs, California, in the desert. And they would sometimes, like, take flight a little. Yeah, the heat. If it's hot, even the ones that we have here, Paro Planeta and Americana, they'll fly. But they're actually originally from Africa, and they were brought over on the transatlantic

26:26slave trade in large numbers. So they're actually, like, they're adapted to be in hot environments, and when it's hot, they'll fly. So sometimes people will be really freaked out. This is like one more... New fear unlocked. I don't like roaches enough. Flying roaches... New fear unlocked. It's traumatizing. Don't... Just... Just... Stop. Yeah. If you were, like, not... Like, you should care about climate change. We all should. But if you were, like, I'm on the fence about it, then as it gets warmer, cockroaches will take to the skies. Let me go there. Okay?

Declining populations and climate impact

26:54Two things.

Declining populations and climate impact

26:55First, I heard tell that the world population of insects is on the decline. Yeah. My first inquiry with you. Does that relate at all to whatever impact climate change has on the world population of insects, on bugs, and do they migrate? Do they hang out? Do they spring forth? Are these connected? So, insects, we think, are declining at a rate that we've never seen before.

27:24People after the Industrial Revolution, there's stuff in the literature that said, hey, like, I'm not sure, but I think this might have a negative impact on insects. And fast forward to the early 2010s, people started doing studies that showed that populations of a particular butterfly had dropped by 70%. Populations of this other species dropped by big numbers. Bug zappers and raid spray are doing their job. Oh, my gosh. Are they really? No. No. Okay. You know what it is? It's us.

27:55It's we change the habitat. We increase the temperature. We have now extreme weather. There's flooding. There's increased fire. All of those things are things that insects didn't evolve with, right? So, we know that insects are declining at a rate that's faster than we've ever seen. But the problem is, is that all life that we think about, with the exception of maybe fish, right, it came after insects, right? So, plants, we need, they need insects to pollinate them. Birds eat insects. Fish eat insects. You know, mammals eat insects.

28:26We eat insects. In the absence of insects. What did she just say? I know. I'm like, we eat insects? Well, there was a trend. And maybe this is, like, leading to the decline, I don't know, of, like, insect snacks as, like, because they have a high source of protein. Yeah, man. What do you think of that trend? I heard tell. They're high protein. Yeah, they are high protein. Low fat, depending on what you're eating. The water bugs and the cockroaches are actually very fatty. So, if you were going to skip one, I would skip those ones. But, like... Okay. Okay, thanks. I'm writing that down.

28:56Totally right. I'm writing it down. Cockroaches, not good for your diet. Not good for your diet. That's the one reason to not eat them, really. It's just about the calories. When you think about it, it's really about that. But I would say, like, my finger is on the pulse of tomorrow. I'm a young, hip, urban woman. And I think eating insects is cool. And people should all do it. Well, you're not concerned about us declining the population further by also eating them? I would not go eat street insects. I'm not going to go eat insects just, like, go and collect on Fifth Avenue.

29:27I mean, people, when they rear insects for protein for cricket cookies or whatever, they're doing it in the same way that we rear cattle. Farms. Yeah. You just said cricket cookies, like... Like it's next to the Oreos and the chocolate chip on the shelf. Like you're selling it at the bake sale. Shouldn't it be? Cricket cookies. It shouldn't be? Okay. I confess, I've had sauteed crickets. It was good. The little ones, like this big. It's popular. They're popular in Mexico, right? It's like a dish. I don't know. It was served to me once. Yeah. It tasted like chicken. They're like kind of nutty.

29:58No, no. Yeah. It tasted like a snack. I mean, just snack like you'd have at the bar. What I don't understand is we're not much different, other than the climate change part of this, we're not much different than we were 100 years ago, moving into cities, taking over the landscape. Why is there extra loss of insects today? I think urbanization is increasing at a rate that's much different than it was 100 years ago. All that means is we are living on less and less of Earth's surface area. But we're expanding. Won't the insects like that?

30:28I think we're expanding, though, the amount of impervious surface, the amount of concrete, right? We're decreasing the amount of forest. We pollute the water. There's a lot of insects that are aquatic that dwell in fresh water. That kind of destroys their habitat. I was just recently driving. I forgot where. And I just noticed. I never thought to notice this before. I'm on a four-lane preway going in one direction. And there's a big divider. And then there's four lanes coming the other way. And I'm just looking at the total surface area that that is. It's huge. It's huge.

30:59And the lights that go over it, because we're going to have lights so that we can drive at night, that negatively impacts insects. Why? Well, there's insects eat less. Caterpillars eat less. Moths that communicate. They're flying, kind of using the UV light to navigate with. Fireflies that communicate with each other at night. Light, bad, bad patient. But aren't bug zappers evidence that we're smarter than insects? Because we know they're sensitive to UV. So let's make a UV light and then zap them. But we're dumber than we think, right?

31:31We shouldn't pat ourselves on the back, because we designed those to get rid of mosquitoes and biting insects. And actually, like 90% of what bug zappers kill are beneficial insects. So they kill almost no mosquitoes. So you actually, there's no sense in buying it. So in a way, I kind of feel like that's kind of a lot. Why can't we just get the bug zapper and then collect it all and just eat? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Can the bug zapper also barbecue them? Yeah. And turn them to a delicious treat. Yeah, just a little channel goes over to the grill.

32:03Yeah, yeah. In a way, maybe it kind of also fricassees them itself a little bit with their food. It does a little saute. A little sass barbecue. But also, we're so bad at killing the bugs that seem to be irritating everybody, like ticks. Oh, so yeah. So ticks are not bugs. They're arachnids. It's not that we're bad at killing ticks. It's that because of climate change, because of changing temperatures, ticks from other regions are moving and they're expanding their ranges.

32:34That's why we have the Lone Star tick here, for example, which is the one that causes a meat allergy. It can carry a pathogen that can cause a meat allergy. That's because of us. We changed the climate and now they've been able to move into our area. So we've created habitats that previously were hostile to some varieties of insects. Insects, now they can hang out and do the backstroke. And now we're affected by that because that was a place we created. Yeah, we created them. The catastrophe that we're seeing, we created and we're kind of keeping it going.

33:05We could make decisions that would actually have really beneficial impacts on insects that we should make. Why don't we make it? I can't just go past this because I know people who've been bitten by the Lone Star tick.

33:19They can't. So it's not that they can't eat meat, apparently. They can't eat mammals. So they can eat chicken and fish. So I heard. You know what I think? I think vegetarians created this in the lab. Yeah. They were like, what could we do? Alpha gal. That's a... But more, yeah, but more like pescatarians created this in a lab, like a really specific subset. So I hear tell that in Martha's Vineyard, which is, you know, island off of Cape Cod, you know, a destination for the rich.

33:50Yeah. There's an airport there. You take your private plane onto it. As one does. Famously, don't the Obamas go there? As one would do. I'm told that tick was so prevalent on that island that stores are now reducing their supply of meat for sale because no one's buying them.

34:09And restaurants have menus for those who are thusly affected, specifically... Maybe a cardiologist made this alphabet. I know. I was just going to say, like, are these... Maybe these ticks are out for our health? Yeah. They're gifts. You say reduce your red meat consumption. I mean... And nobody did it. And they're like, what can we do? And the cardiologist was like, let's import some of this stuff from... Let's import the Lone Star. This drop in population, is it just habitat or is there other things that affect them?

Mating habits and light pollution

34:54Are they not finding mates? There are a lot of ways you can drop a population. So, population is just a single species. So, we're looking across... It's true across all the species of insects that we've looked at, right? So, what we think is that for some things, it's water pollution. For some things... And that means that they can't, you know... They don't... They die. So, they're not able to survive. For some things like fireflies, if it's light pollution, they can't actually see each other to find a mate. So, they're not able to reproduce. Oh. Like, it kind of varies depending on what the species is. That's why there are no fireflies in Times Square.

35:26I always wondered that. Yeah, there should be... I mean, they make these flashes and the flashes are species specific. They need to be able to see each other so they can see the flashes to know which species to mate with. I grew up in the desert and we didn't have fireflies. And so, then as an adult, when I was here in the summers, I was like, oh my God, these are the coolest things I've ever seen. And still, in the summer, I look at them with such awe. They make light with their bum. I mean, it's incredible. Butt light, we call it. Butt light. Butt light. You know, I heard that. Butt light.

35:56Yeah, it's a summer tree. But yeah, I mean, we should all be kind of sad, right? The things that we think about when we think about summer, like fireflies or monarch butterflies, like those are declining at such alarming rates. Monarchs have decreased by like 90% since 1970. You know, when I was a kid, I saw them all the time. Now, I hardly see any monarch butterflies. Yeah, it's us. We destroyed the habitat. They need milkweed. It's a specific plant that they've evolved to eat. And they have an arduous, long migratory route that goes down to Mexico and back.

36:29And they get hit by cars and what have you. So, I mean, we're making, we've made decisions in the past and we're making decisions even right now that negatively impact insects.

Mosquitoes and pest control

36:40All right.

Mosquitoes and pest control

36:41So I got to, this is the 900-pound gorilla in the room. Yeah. Okay. Some insects are prettier than others to the non-entomologist. You mean like head lice? That's a gorgeous one, right? I'm assuming. So, I'm just. Neil is body shaming insects, by the way. I just want to say that for the record. He's like, yeah, gnats aren't looks maxing enough. Nobody. He's the mean girl part of the Star Talker. Yeah, exactly. Nobody doesn't like ladybugs. They're nice. It lands on you.

37:10It's not going to bite you or sting you or inject you with venom. Okay. And so I can list insects that emotionally we're cool with. Yeah. Okay. More humans have died at the hands of mosquitoes than have ever died in all wars we have ever fought against each other. Yeah. If we could render mosquitoes extinct from this world, none of us would complain. What would you do as an entomologist? If by that you mean that we would get rid of a specific kind of anopheles and a specific

37:43kind of Aedes, Aedes aegypti, those are the deadliest animals on the planet. Those are the ones that vector malaria, dengue, chikungunya, yellow fever. If we got rid of those two or three species complex, then yeah, I think that that would actually have immense help to the human population. But there's thousands. While maintaining others. Yeah, there's thousands of other mosquitoes. So the bats have plenty to eat. Yeah. Bats, dragonflies, there's lots of things that eat mosquitoes and there's thousands of species of mosquitoes. And so they live outside the human condition.

38:14They're not vectoring diseases that affect humans. Those guys get to survive. Do you feel like there's a way to do that? That like we can get rid of the bad ones and keep the good ones? They've been trying. So people have tried releasing sterile males that are just shooting deads that have no ability to impregnate a female. Well, they've tried it a couple of different ways, one with sterile males that they were irradiated and one where they actually have a bacteria called Wolbachia that actually makes males. It's like a Dracoar Noir and the ladies just don't want to have anything to do with it. Is that what it is essentially? You know what it is?

38:45The Wolbachia makes it so that the Wolbachia is transmitted by females. So the Wolbachia changes it so that males are basically, yeah, males are in very, very low numbers and only females survive. So females aren't fertilized, no eggs, no babies. They tried releasing dragonflies years ago, but dragonflies, and dragonflies do eat mosquitoes in the juvenile stage and in the adult stage, but they don't like to eat. Juvenile is still in the water? Yeah. Juvenile mosquitoes and juvenile dragonflies. They're sitting ducks or sitting mosquitoes.

39:16Sitting mosquitoes. Right, because they're just in the water like that. Yeah, with a little siphon. Still water, not moving water. Yeah, still water. And dragonflies, as babies, as nymphs, they will eat mosquitoes, but they don't like to breed in large numbers on command, so they could never release them in large enough numbers because that would be the solution. Just put dragonflies everywhere. Do you know the film The Hellstrom Chronicle? No. Maybe my finger's not on the pulse of tomorrow. Am I not a young hip woman? It was an apocalyptic documentary from the 1970s describing...

39:46The future where insects take over the world and they just eat all of our food supply. The Hellstrom Chronicle. Yeah. Check it out. It is a... I mean, people have... I've never forgotten it. I saw it, like, once in the 1970s. This idea that there's, quote-unquote, injurious insects, the ones that are coming... Because they like the same things we like. They eat this... A lot of insects eat the same things we eat. That they would come for our crops, that they would take over, that they're out to get us, right? Right, right. This kind of... They're all locusts. This is the apocalyptic scenario. Yeah. But in reality, I think, like, there's a very small number of stored food pests or grain

40:22pests that we're worried about locusts. Small number of species, but that doesn't mean they're not out there, ready to eat all of our corn. Yeah. I mean, if you don't put all of your corn in one giant pile that's open to insects to go in there and eat it, then you're solid. You're good. And how about the boll weevil? Oh, the boll weevil. I mean, the boll weevil was an invasive species. Invasive species are also a source of insect decline, because invasive species often can out-compete native species. I think a boll weevil might be the only insect, whatever kind of bug it is. Yeah, beetle. Beetle. The only one that has a blues song named after it.

40:53Multiple, because people did different versions. Oh, okay. There's a lead belly one that's very famous. Yes, that's the one I'm thinking of. There's a Bessie Smith did one. Multiple people did, because you can... Boll weevil. Yeah, you can pop it in. Yeah, because if you're picking cotton, then there's a boll weevil eating all your cotton. Yeah. Where's our current, like, pop hits about lanternflies? I know, right? That's what we really need, because those are, I feel like, our modern irritation.

Lanternflies and invasive species

41:17Yeah.

Lanternflies and invasive species

41:18What's a lanternfly? Well, it's the... Shall I? I think you shall. Well, is it fly or bug? Lantern bug? It's actually a bug. That's very astute. As a fellow entomologist, I was very astute to call him... And you know what? Some things are arachnids, and some things aren't. It's another thing I wanted to teach you all. No, but the lantern bug is like a thing that eats a bunch of everything, like trees and whatever. Yeah, it's got a sucking mouth part. It's got a sucking mouth part, not a licking mouth. Not a licking mouth, so it sucks the plant juice.

41:49And it's been in, like, it's been in Manhattan, it's been in New York City for a few years now, and we've been told to stop them every time you see one. And they're sort of dumb, like, it's easy to stop them. Yeah. They don't, like, run away real fast or anything. You can just, like, easily murder. You got to watch out, though, because if you murder the ones easily, you're actually promoting fast ones. If you kill all the slow ones, because they're easy to kill, you just made a whole generation of fast ones. Right. They're, like, adapting to be... Exactly.

42:19So what you should do is only go after the fastest ones. But then in the meantime, the slow ones are still eating all the trees or whatever. Well, they suck the... I mean... Okay, yeah. What are they doing? They're just sucking the plant sap, right? Okay. But... As we do when we make maple syrup. Yeah. In a lot of ways, they're maple syrup tappers, right? The population, we think, is basically becoming established in the Northeast. We tried scraping off their eggs, because that was the other thing. Well, maybe we'd get rid of the eggs. And that really hasn't done anything. So, sadly, we think that this is an invasive species that, much like the bull weevil, is

42:51just kind of here. I stomped one this morning. Should I stop stomping them? I mean, if... You stomped a bull weevil? No, I mean... Where do you live? A lantern bag. When I was out in the field. When I was writing my... She's on the back 40. When I was writing my blue songs. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, we don't know that it's really making much of an impact. So the best... If you were to do anything, you know what you should do? Yeah. As a New Yorker, as all New Yorkers should do, is we should learn the insects in our neighborhood so we can prevent the next invasive species from becoming established.

43:23Because if you knew what was, like, on your walk to work, right, and you saw something that you weren't supposed to see that was unusual, you would tell someone sooner, and then you could prevent them from becoming established. So if the pavement ants start lifting the slabs off of the... They're, like, jacked. They have, like, little, like, muscles on their... They work out in the yard.

The genetics of human lice

43:48All right.

The genetics of human lice

43:49So a brief follow-on. I think you already went there, but I'm going to just to bring a closer to it. We have people among us who are saying, save the whales, save the porpoises, save this, save that. Nobody's ever said, save the rats, or save the leeches, or save the... Save the... Any other parasitic... Save the maggots? The maggots. There you go. If you will. Thank you. Save the headlows. So what I'm asking is, we are very species-biased about what it is we want to declare that we

44:18want to save, whereas all of these creatures are on God's green earth just trying to make a living. Yeah. It's not their fault that it's their job to suck your blood. Yeah. That's not... Don't blame them for that. Yeah, the bed bug's just trying to make it in New York City. And they're making it. What did they do before mattresses, by the way, bed bugs? I mean, I feel like the day mattresses were invented, bed bugs were like, guys, this is my time. But like, if you look, it's actually, if you like reading about human history, people have

44:50been writing about bed bugs for a really long time. Because even when you had just clumps of straw, then there were bed bugs that were in there. And plus, lice, this is the most fascinating fact that I've learned about lice. Most fascinating, okay? Head lice are genetically different from genital lice. Yeah, it's true. Even... Okay. No, no. And so how does that happen? Wait, wait, wait. Can I sit? Can I sit? Okay. So go really far back, 30,000 years.

45:21We're hairy all over our bodies. What? The lice wouldn't know who... There's just hair everywhere. Then when we started getting less and less hair, then we had a hair gap between our genital hair and the hair on our heads. So that the speciation would have occurred around when we started becoming hairless in the major parts of our torso. Orphaning one branch of the body lice from the other. I've read that. Is that still true? I think that's true. And I think we think that one is more closely related to the lice that gorillas have, and

45:55one is more closely related to the lice that chimpanzees have. Wow. Which is which? I forget whether it was... I don't want to know. I don't know. What are you going to do with this information? I don't know. In the game. I have a seven-year-old daughter. I want to say something fun when I have to... About who did glice at supper?

46:15About head lice. About things. About head lice. But you know what? Head lice is... You could tell your daughter this. Everybody eventually gets head lice. People feel a lot of shame about it. But like little kids, they put their heads next to each other. And if you have lice, it's not that you're dirty or... I felt guilty because my mom said if you share hats, you're going to get head lice. And there was a head lice outbreak in my grade one class. And I was convinced it was because Jennifer and I had shared a hat at recess. But guess what?

46:46Now that I'm a grown-up entomologist, you could tell your daughter, it's just kind of a fact of lice. Hey! Whoa! I see what you did there. I didn't even know that. Wait, so you contracted lice? Head lice, yeah. When I... For the record... When she was a child. For the record, this was like 50 years ago. Not like yesterday. It was 50 years ago. And I felt a lot of... I felt very stressed about it. But it turns out, actually, that my mother, who's a high school teacher, she had... There was also a head lice outbreak at her high school. So now I'm like, it wasn't even me.

47:16It wasn't even Jennifer's hat. Okay, I read and have reported on the fact that lice infestations are 10 times more frequent among white children than among black children. And just wondering, were you white back then when you got the... It's like reverse racism with the lice? So they like... They will go in any hair. It's easier to find them in hair that is straight. Straight.

47:46And people used to think that... And this maybe was true for a period of time from when Madam C.J. Walker invented hair pressing. That would have kept it out. Yeah. So if you were using lye in your hair, or if you were using chemical pressing, as we called it, then you would... To straighten your hair, then you would have been less likely to have lice. But... The lice doesn't stand a chance. Lice doesn't stand a chance. But if you were having natural hair, which I had natural hair, then you really should have your head checked for lice. So this actually really happened.

48:17My school, they would have the moms from the neighborhood come in and do a lice check. But the mom said to the three black kids, my twin and I, and this other black kid, we don't need to check your hair, because black kids don't get lice. That's so... Okay. But I had lice. Oh. I had it, and they didn't check it. And then I was scratching my head at home, and my mom... And we were all scratching our head. And then my mom was like... And then she said, oh, we all have lice. And I said, oh, no. They said we don't get lice, because black kids don't get lice. And my mom was really mad, and she went and she yelled at the principal.

48:47Because it actually is... It's not whether you have black hair or white hair. It's whether you chemically... If you did a chemical perm, you also... Like, if you were... But also, straight... If you said the louse likes straight hair better, you're more... So it's a relative... It's not that black people don't get it. It's that it's just less likely. It's not... Well, I mean, it's not that they like straight hair better. It's just it's easier for us to find it in straight hair. So we often have overlooked... Like, in my case, they could have checked my hair, and they didn't. Got it. Right? I had lice. I had a lot of lice. Okay.

49:17It was 50 years ago. Just to underscore, this was 50 years ago. Is that the day you became an entomologist? I hated... Oh, my gosh. I really didn't like it. But nowadays, there's actually a lot of things that you can do if you have lice. So God forbid your daughter has lice. Call me. Okay. There's, like, ways you can treat it without chemical insecticide.

Beetle size and Haldane quote

49:40What is the size of the smallest and the largest bug? Oh, that's a good question. So there are these little tiny, tiny, tiny things called fairy flies that are just a couple of millimeters. And they're really, really tiny. That's probably the smallest one. And they fly? They can fly, but, I mean, come on. They're very, very tiny. So they're not going long. Other than by wind. They can be blown by wind. And the biggest ones, in terms of length, there's some really, really long stick insects, phasmatodea. In terms of weight.

50:10Stick ones. Yeah, like how long? Those ones that look like sticks on, like, tree sticks. There's ones that are longer than, about as long as my arm here. Oh, wow. But then there are really heavy. Are those like in Brazilian rainforest kind of bugs? Or Vietnam or Asia. Like, there's lots of tropical. Tropical. Yeah, tropical. Although you can get some pretty big ones in Texas if you go back there. There's some pretty big ones in Texas. But then in terms of, like, mass, I would say there are some beetles that are really, really pretty heavy. Like, what are we talking? Like an orange, an apple? Or like a? Yeah, like a navel orange.

50:42The weight of a navel orange. What? That's wild. And how big?

50:47Let's say, how about this? Let's say navel orange in weight and size. That grosses me out so hard. No, it's so good. Ew, because if you step on that, it would go pop. But you wouldn't. Well, you wouldn't, of course. I, of course, possibly would, depending on the situation. I'm so sorry. Because to see that, you'd actually have, assuming that you spend most of your time in New York City, you would have traveled somewhere to see it. And you wouldn't be like, oh, I'm here now. Squash. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's not like in my Manhattan apartment. You don't go out of your way. Yeah, right, right.

51:17Right. And I remember reading National Geographic, and they had an issue on beetles. And one of them was the Goliath beetle. Yeah. That was something like this big. Yeah. I mean, they're, I would say, like, they're the navel orange, a big navel orange size. Okay. Yeah. And beetles bugs? They're not. They're coleoptra. They're holometabolous insects that have an egg. Holo. Holometabolous. Yeah. Non-holometabolous. Yeah, egg, larva, pupa, complete rearrangement. Right. And then adult. And there's more beetles than there is almost anything on Earth described right now,

51:50although I think that bees, ants, and wasps are catching up, because people are describing a lot of those right now. Please give us Darwin's quote about beetles, and we will end on that. Or Haldane. Could I give you Haldane's quote? That there's an inordinate? Oh, JBS Haldane. Yeah. Okay. How about if I give that one? Okay. Although Darwin did work on beetles. That was the thing he worked on first. But Haldane said that God must have an inordinate fondness for beetles. Given how many, that's the quote I was looking for, Haldane. He's got some good quotes. Yeah. A page-turner. Let's go for a page-turner. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, Jessica, my gosh.

52:22I had all this pent-up bug energy, but can we do this once a year? Yeah, let's do it insect time. Yes. Once a year. I mean, your entire thing fascinates me. Just a year, and you're interested in it, your origin story, which I've decided is with the lice. It's a lousy story. And it was 50 years ago. It's one of the internet. And you've got dragonfly earrings. Yeah.

52:52I have two different kinds, dragonfly earrings, and I have a beetle ring as well. I went full insect, I went. I mean, you're repping insects hard today. They need a little love. It's fascinating. No, when the insects take over, she'll be their queen. We need someone out advocating for them, because everyone really hates them. So this is like a good PR. They need you on PR. We should all love the insects. We've got to save the insects if we want to save ourselves. Well, again, thank you, Jessica.

53:22Thank you. A friend and colleague just across the way here at the American Museum of Natural History, right up here on the Upper West Side of New York City. We are here in my office at the Hayden Planetarium, and we're going to come back to you with more insect queries, for sure. And, McGeean, your podcast. My podcast is Fake the Nation. Fake the Nation. Have I ever been on your podcast? You have. You've been on it a few times. But not lately. We're going to bring you back. The people need to hear your takes. You don't call. You don't write. You don't text.

53:54I know. This is, yeah, we will bring you back, and you'll have, now that you have this bug energy.

54:02Fake the Nation. And we can catch you. Are you a regular on Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me? That's right. Yeah, tune in to Fake the Nation, Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me. We'll find you there. We love you. All right. This has been the bug edition of StarTalk. Neil deGrasse Tyson, your personal astrophysicist. Keep looking up. We're down at the bugs. We're down at the bugs. We're down at the bugs. We're down at the bugs. We're down at the bugs. We're down at the bugs. We're down at bugs. We're down at bugs. We're down at bugs.

54:32We're down at bugs. We're down at bugs. We're down at bugs. We're down at bugs. We're down at bugs. We're down at bugs. We're down at bugs. We're down at bugs. We're down at bugs. We're down at bugs. We're down at bugs. We're down at bugs. We're down at bugs. We're down at bugs. We're down at bugs. We're down at bugs. We're down at bugs. We're down at bugs. We're down at bugs.