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Biologist J. B. S. Haldane once quipped that if there's a God, the Creator seems to have “an inordinate fondness for beetles.”

Why? Well, 1/2 of species described in #science are insects (among eukaryotes). Of those, >1/3 are beetles, at ~400,000 known species.

I’m fond of these critters bc I began my career working with Plagiodera versicolora, a particularly cute beetle.

Now some entomologists suspect there may be just as many parasitic wasps but that’s a tale for another day.

in reply to Sheril Kirshenbaum

I wish there was more early education on arthropods. The bias for vertebrates creates a biased and limited understanding of the amazing and incredible diversity of life on earth.
in reply to Sheril Kirshenbaum

More on that Haldane quote: https://wist.info/haldane-jbs/1751/
in reply to Sheril Kirshenbaum

Haldane also wrote the idiosyncratic children’s book My Friend Mr Leakey, one of the more unusual ways to discover biology & genetics when you went to see what else the author had written.
in reply to Sheril Kirshenbaum

Sir Terry Pratchett agrees about the beetles. And I think that biochemists would rather claim Haldane as one of their own. Polymath indeed.

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