Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, August 27, 1995 TAG: 9508280110
SECTION: CURRENT PAGE: NRV20 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
SOURCE: ALLISON BLAKE STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: BLACKSBURG LENGTH: Long
Bees pollinate them, too
That's why the insects
Are friend to me and you.
Everyone likes flowers
Everybody needs food
That's why the insects are
Pretty awesome dudes."
-The Pollination Song
Marching bands, tractors, clip-clopping horses and Girl Scouts troop past. Then comes the "All Bug Band," featuring, among others, the five Mack children wriggling along in a hula-hooped contraption draped in bedsheets.
So it is that the Virginia Tech Department of Entomology makes another public appearance - this time, at Blacksburg's July 4 parade.
"Next year, we're going to put fringe on it," says department head Tim Mack, describing the family's new caterpillar suit.
The old department head used to dress up like a fly.
Maybe it's the mothball fumes wafting through Price Hall. Something fuels the perennial sense of humor emanating from the Entomology Department. Maybe it's because the department is an all-graduate program -although they do teach undergrads -and they're old enough to laugh at themselves.
Whatever it is, they seem to pop up everywhere - while passing along some lessons about bugs.
If they're not dressed up at a public parade, grad student Jerrod Leland strums a guitar and plays his self-scribed "Pollination Song" for visiting kids - wearing a butterfly suit. And who among us has not chuckled at an "I Fear No Weevil" bumpersticker seen on the streets of Blacksburg?
The entomologists - or bug scientists - explain that they just look at life a little differently, protesting all the while that they do NOT run around with butterfly nets.
Department head Mack corrals the humor for good use.
"We deal with a discipline that has kind of a 'yuck factor' to a lot of people," he says.
"People look at us and say, 'What are you doing?' The answer is, insects do a lot of damage. Cockroach control costs $60 million in this state alone."
The scientists are the only people who can afford to do the kind of research that ultimately saves industry money, he said. Consider the thistle. Its seeds are officially considered noxious seeds by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, which means they are not to slip into other grain. At Tech, some are studying how to get rid of them without pesticides - by releasing a beetle that loves to eat thistle seeds. It could be worth $1 million a year in savings to the state.
"If we were a private company, that would never happen," Mack says.
Profit-driven businesses could never take the time to run such years-long tests, he said.
Eric Day runs the insect identification lab (and volunteers that he's got a bug collection at home - of the Volkswagen variety, that is).
But he also peers into the microscope to view the uncommon insects that occasionally puzzle county extension agents. Every once in awhile, he turns up an exotic interloper, a bug with no natural predators in Virginia. They're the bugs to watch out for, because nobody knows what destruction they might wreak.
One of the most famous exotics in the country is the gypsy moth. First released in Massachusetts in the late 19th century, the ravaging horde has slowly intruded south, decimating oak leaves along the way.
Upstairs at Price Hall, it's Andy Rogers' job to track the moths for a federally funded gypsy moth mapping program. "It's been proven, time and time again: It's a difficult insect to ignore," he says.
Rogers points out on a map the line of gypsy moth infiltration. The leading edge isn't far away: Bedford, Montvale, Eagle Rock. When will it hit Blacksburg?
"It depends on what you mean by hit," he says. "You catch a few moths in a trap once in awhile."
But defoliation by a full flock is still several years away, he predicts.
Mack practically credits gypsy moths for his career choice. As a child, he looked out over his upstate New York background on August. "It looked like winter," he says. Gypsy moths had consumed his playground.
As human travel has increased, so has the problem of hitchhiking exotics. Over 50 percent come in aboard ornamental trees and plants. At the entomology department now, scientists are worried about a new pest, the tiger mosquito.
"We don't know what that mosquito will do," says Day. "In Asia, it causes disease."
It arrived in this country a decade ago, when a cargo of tires from Asia, bound for a Texas recycling plant, reached port in that state. By 1991, the mosquitoes arrived in Virginia. This summer they made their appearance in the Roanoke Valley.
Scientists are studying the mosquito now.
Consider the problems wrought by insects:
In your home. Pile the woodstove logpile next to your house with wood siding, and you invite carpenter ants. Plant your garden amid a mess of woodchips, and welcome earwigs.
Consider your food: Would you eat produce with bugs in it? If you would, it would cut down on pesticide use, some of which is relatively harmless, despite the reputation, says Mack.
Consider your health: Remember when Lyme disease arrived on the scene? There's now a new disease passed along by deer ticks, called human ganulocytic ehrlichiosis. It's as nasty as Lyme disease - chills, fever - and it's killed four of its confirmed 60 victims since arriving in the U.S. Read all about it on the entomology department's homepage, accessible at http://www:ento.vt.edu.
"I wouldn't be surprised if there are more mite and tick-borne diseases," says Mack. "We need more research."
Certainly history shows the wide swath cut by insects. Mack teaches a class now called "Insects and Human Society." The course's outline is displayed on the Internet, and interested folks can find it through the department's home page.
Insects forced the French from Haiti. Napoleon sent General LeClerc and 25,000 men to put down a revolution. Only 4,000 made it home. The rest died from mosquito-transmitted yellow fever.
The department's Ph.D's also enjoy old-fashioned teaching, too, like the kids from Blacksburg Day Care who showed up for one of the bug classes. These children chose the entomology department over spending a day at the bowling alley, and squeal with something between joy and horror when the cockroaches crawl across their outstretched palms.
They shriek over a gooey picture of a termite, and blanch over ticks. But in the end, they all want to hold the insects, including the meal worms that drop off everybody's hands.
"They're really interesting," says young Rachel Webb, by way of explaining her interest. "If you look close, they have hidden stuff, like wings."
Reese Voshell, the professor who made the butterfly costume, maintains that children aren't scared of bugs until adults teach them to be. He's been offering a one-credit course to public school teachers so they can get rid of their grown-up gross-out over bugs and teach bug stuff to kids.
At home, Voshell and his daughter have a bug collection. Eric Day's sons watch him working with his honeybees.
Perhaps the children will inherit qualities Day sees in his fellow entomologists. "Cool observational types," he says. "Stands back and observes things."
That's why Gary Larsen's "The Far Side," replete with Larsen's apparent insect know-how, tickles the folks in Price Hall.
Day sort of chuckles, describing how he thinks folks see his colleagues and him.
"Absurd, detached - those people who work with bugs up at Tech."
by CNB