Winter World by Heinrich Bernd

Author:Heinrich, Bernd [Heinrich, Bernd]
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Publisher: HarperCollins e-books
Published: 2007-07-16T16:00:00+00:00

14

INSECTS: FROM THE DIVERSITY TO THE LIMITS

It seems astounding to us that some frogs can survive months being frozen, or that a bird as small as a kinglet can stay warm and survive even one winter night, much less a whole northern winter. But why, really, are we surprised? I think it’s because we compare them to ourselves. We feel uncomfortable when we chill only a degree or so and we can’t imagine how a tiny bird keeps warm in a blizzard. Yet for every kinglet that we find in the winter woods hundreds of thousands of invertebrate animals exponentially tinier than a kinglet survive by doing what for us seems unimaginable. Even when we do know what they accomplish we still tend to withhold respect. Why? It’s because most of them are insects. They are animals so different from us that it’s as if they were from an alien world; we find it difficult to identify with their problems. Yet they face the same problems of cold, freezing, and energy balance that we or a kinglet deal with. They have evolved some of the same, and also different solutions, but with different constraints.

To an entomologist and anyone who aspires to be one, there are no life-forms on earth as diverse, varied, tough, and inventive as the insects. In their teeming millions of species, they own the world. We may not like many of them that compete with us for food, fiber, timber, or that suck our blood and spread our diseases, but we are obliged to acknolwedge their tenacious success, and we may admire many of them for their stunning beauty. Within the animal world they have collectively pushed the limits of things possible, in terms of diversity, beauty, noxiousness, social organization, architecture, powers of flight, sensory capabilities, and ability to survive extremes of climate. And when I contemplate these organisms that are much more ancient than us, and that will long survive us, I wonder about the “secret” of their success and then I am forced to confront how differently a physical scientist and a life scientist sees the world.

The physical scientist tries to understand the world according to mathematical precision by reducing its composition and functioning to a very few “laws of nature.” Such laws, in analogy with our own civil laws, are as if handed down from some higher authority who then enforces them by virtue of that authority because a law is, by definition, general. It applies uniformly. There are no exceptions, or no exceptions are allowed.

Insects’ success is derived from exploiting individual specificity. No one way is best. Insects achieve their success through their diversity, where each individual case is special within the generalizations. Each species is adapted ever more specifically into a specialist niche, catering to specific individual needs. An ever-greater narrowing down to the specific has resulted in miniaturization, and ever-greater diversity. Insects exhibit an exhilaration and a celebration of the exceptions, where anything goes that can. There are few boundaries, because there has been no enforcement or encapsulation by or in laws.

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