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from the issue of April 3, 2008
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NSF grant to allow for completion of Central America, Mexico study
Beetlemania
BY TOM SIMONS, UNIVERSITY COMMUNICATIONS
Joni Mitchell sang in a 1970 hit that "You don't know what you've got till it's gone." That line could be the theme song for research by UNL scientists and others to study the biodiversity of beetles in Mexico, Guatemala and Belize.
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| | | BEETLE RESEARCHER - Brett Ratcliffe, curator of insects at the University of Nebraska State Museum, sits with a collection net in Amazonian Bolivia. M. Jameson/Courtesy photo.
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Brett Ratcliffe, curator of insects at the University of Nebraska State Museum, is leading the five-year research project funded by a $481,000 National Science Foundation grant to study the dynastine scarab beetles. Also known as rhinoceros beetles, they include some of the largest living insects.
"We have a whole package of trying to understand biodiversity in these developing countries, which for this group of animals that has not been very largely explored," said Ratcliffe, co-principal investigator of the grant with Ronald D. Cave of the University of Florida.
"We really have our work cut out for us, and there's a rush to do this because we are destroying habitat so rapidly around the world, especially in the tropical, developing countries, that we're losing species before we even discover them," Ratcliffe said. "And we don't know what that impact is going to be to humankind down the road if it turns out that some of these things could have been beneficial."
The most important thing for the new study, Ratcliffe said, is to help citizens in the three countries understand how important it is to them to preserve their local habitat.
"It's very difficult for North Americans to preach to people in developing countries how they should preserve their forests for the future and how valuable they are when we in this country have destroyed most of our original old-growth forest in the first place," he said. "And when you've got people down there who are starving to death and need to clear land to grow food, it's even harder. So we need to engage locals to understand why habitat preservation is important to them, not to us."
To preserve habitat, Ratcliffe said, local citizens have to know what's there.
"You cannot manage your national parks and reserves in any country unless you know the composition of the flora and the fauna - what plants and animals live there," Ratcliffe said. "By doing this, we are establishing baseline information about what is there. Resource managers in those countries are going to be able to use this information to properly manage their parks and reserves - and the country's natural resources."
| | BOOK SERIES - Ratcliffe's beetle research is being compiled into a comprehensive, five-book series. The first two books (at left) have been completed. The third will be based on collections made in Mexico, Guatemala and Belize.
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Ratcliffe, Cave and graduate students will travel to the countries twice a year for the next five years to collect beetles, starting with a trip to Belize in June.
They will rely on a network of collaborating local entomologists in the three countries. In addition, the grant provides for the local collaborators to develop a system of parataxonomists, lay people living in the area and who will be paid to collect specimens year-round.
At the end of the grant, Ratcliffe and Cave will produce a book that will provide a comprehensive description of the dynastine scarab beetles in the three countries. Ratcliffe said it's the third in a series of five books. The first, which he wrote, was on the rhinoceros beetles of Panama and Costa Rica (2003). The second, a collaboration with Cave, dealt with Honduras, Nicaragua and El Salvador (2006). The fourth book will be on the West Indies and the fifth on the United States and Canada.
Ratcliffe said many of the beetles collected in Mexico, Guatemala and Belize will be deposited in museum collections in those countries. Others will find their way back to the NU State Museum's scarab beetle collection, which ranks as one of the largest in the world at approximately 2 million specimens.
GO TO: ISSUE OF APRIL 3
NEWS HEADLINES FOR APRIL 3
Transgender resource
CAREER award winner aims to make software more reliable
IRP creates online index of UNL data
ORCA honors go to Luthans, Gladyshev
Beetlemania
Fall semester to open with new energy sciences minor
Fifth-annual UNL water conference is April 22-23
Opening Day
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