Buzzwords
On Elderly Ants
Berenbaum
MAy
BERENBAUM
M
ANY O~NERS
OF SECOND~AND
BOOK-
stores In town recognIze me on
sight and inevitably greet me with smiles
whenever I walk in. The smiles are more
than just good retail business practicethey know that odds are excellent that
when I leave I will take with me a lot of
merchandise and leave behind a lot of money. I don't collect things as a rule-not
coins, not matchbook covers, and not even
insects to speak of-but I do seem to have a
compulsive
need to own out-of-date,
cracked, yellowing books about insects. No
matter how long that copy of Entomological Papers from the Yearbook of Agriculture 1903-1911 has sat moldering on the
shelf, they know that once I walk in they'll
never have to dust it again. No matter how
ridiculously overpriced that 1910 edition of
D. Everett Lyon's How to Keep Bees for
Profit may be, the checkbook will open and
the ink will flow. Sometimes in their zeal,
these booksellers will show me books about
snakes, worms, snails, and other noisome
creatures, but to date I have usually managed to contain my impulses, succumbing
only if there's a passing reference to anything six-legged contained therein.
As hobbies go, this one isn't bad, really-it's legal, it's not as expensive as, say,
powerboat racing or big game hunting (not
to mention a lot safer), and, best of all, it's
not fattening.
It is because of this hobby that I happened to find out about Lord Avebury's 14year-old ant. A visit to Old Main Book
Shoppe in downtown Champaign (which
was at one time actually located on Main
Street but is now on Walnut Street; I assume
the owner just liked the sound of "Old
Main" more than "Old Walnut") produced
a dusty 61-year-old copy of the Right Honorable Lord Avebury's Ants, Bees, and
Wasps: A Record of Observations on the
Habits of the Social Hymenoptera (1913.
Appleton, New York), which, of course, I
bought without even opening. Once I got
home, I started thumbing through it and
soon came across a passage discussing the
life expectancy of ants, which, as it happens, was a subject of some controversy a
century ago:
196
The lifeof the queen and workers is much longer than had been
supposed. I may just mention here
that Ikept a queen of Formica (usca
from December 1874 till August
1888, when she must have been
nearly fifteen years old, and of
course she may have been more.
She attained, therefore, by far the
gteatest age of any insect on
record. 1 have also some workers
which I have had since 1875.
When you think about it, keeping an ant
alive for 14 years is quite a remarkable feat.
When you think about it,
keeping an ant alive
for 14 years is quite
a remarkable feat.
After all, it's not like keeping a dog alive for
14 years. For one thing, it's hard to lose or
misplace a dog on your desk, and it's even
harder to flatten one accidentally under a
coffee cup. And it's not like there's a tremendous support system out there for ant owners-all-night
ant veterinary services, for
example, or ant toys and treats at the local
grocery store. I doubt that small animal clinics, name notwithstanding, will see ant patients. And it's a lot easier to ignore an ant
than a dog if you have forgotten to feed it or
take it for a walk-an
ant can't whine or
scratch at the front door with its paws or
even look plaintively at you with sad doggy
eyes (it just doesn't have the same effect with
ommatidia). What makes this feat even more
impressive is that Lord Avebury was an extremely busy man, who had many things to
do in life other than look after a geriatric ant.
As well as being the Right Honorable Lord
Avebury, he was also Sir John Lubbock,
DCL, LLD, MD, FRS, VPLS, FGS, FZS,
FSA, and FES. He belonged to no fewer than
two dozen scientific societies, spread out
among seven countries on three continents.
How do you find someone to look in on your
ant if you have to go out oftown for a while?
It's no wonder that claims for insect
longevity records are few and far between.
They're not nonexistent, though. Not long
after Lord Avebury's book came out, G. Ferris (Entomol. News 30: 27-28 [1919])
reported finding a single nymph of Margarodes vitium alive in a waxy cyst some 17
years after being deposited in the Stanford
collection of Coccidae. E. Gorton Linsley U.
Econ. Entomol. 36: 348-349 [1945]) reported 12 instances in which Buprestis
aurenta, a wood boring buprestid beetle,
emerged from structural wood in walls,
floors, doors, stairway handrails, and doors
anywhere from 10 to 26 years after the
structures were built, in some cases struggling through linoleum to do so. Most recently, Jerry Powell (Oecologia [Berl.J 81:
490-493 [1989]) reported the emergence of
more than 180 yucca moth adults from cocoons dating back to 1969, after 16 to 17
years in diapause. These cocoons had accumulated a lot of miles before emerging, moving from their childhood home in Nevada
to the University of California-Berkeley
campus for a year, next to the University of
California Russell Reserve in Contra Costa,
CA, and then back to Berkeley; those cocoons that had not produced an adult by
1985 were partitioned among an outdoor
cage in Berkeley, Russell Reserve, an outdoor cage at Blodgett Forest, El Dorado
County, CA, and a mobile laboratory on the
Berkeley campus. Eventually all were reunited back in Berkeley in 1986. The odd thing
about this much-delayed emergence is that it
was effectively synchronous-120
adults
emerged in 1985, after 16 years, all within
a 16-day period, and 61 more in 1986,
after 17 years, within a 14-day period. This
sort of life history would tend to make any
entomologist rather paranoid about scheduling any two-week vacations every 16 or
17 years.
It would be difficult to judge which feat
was more impressive-keeping
track of 180
yucca moth pre pupal larvae for 17 years, or
keeping an adult ant alive for 14 years. On
one hand, the diapausing prepupal larvae
don't need to be fed and an adult ant does;
on the other hand, an adult ant is fairly responsive whereas it would be an almost
(Continued on page 201)
AMERICAN
ENTOMOI.OGIST
•
Winter 1994
of 1 to 5 where 1 = strongly disagree and 5 =
stro'lglyagree) that clientele involvement in
the plenary sessions and symposia was on
target. In addition, entomologists agreed
(average score of 4.4) that clientele should
be involved again in future North Central
Branch Meetings of the ESA. I hope that an
increased willingness of ESA members to
listen to our clientele and respond accordingly will generate renewed support for the
profession of entomology within our public
institutions.
•
Michael E. Gray is an associate professor and IPM coordinator at the University of
Illinois, 172 Natural Resources Building,
607 East Peabody Drive, Champaign, IL
61820. His primary responsibilities include
providing leadership in the area of extension programming for field crop insects.
Much of his previous research efforts have
focused on the management of insect
pests of corn.
(Continued from page 198)
Kaplan, R. M. & G. C. Pascoe. 1977. Humorous
lectures and humorous examples: some effects
on comprehension and retention. J. Educ. Psycho\. 69: 61-65.
Kauffman, S. P. & F. M. Dwyer. 1974. Effectivencss of cartoons and photographs in in-service
training. Calif.J. Educ. Psycho!.25: 197-204.
Markiewiez, D. 1974. Effects of humor on persuasion. Sociometry. 37: 407-422.
Naftulin, D. H., J. E. Ware, & F. A. Donnelly.
1973. The Doctor Fox lecture: a paradigm of
educational seduction. J. Med. Educ. 48:
631-635.
Wakshlag, J. J., K. D. Day, & D. Zimmerman.
1981. Selectiveexposure to educational television programs as a function of differently
paced humorous inserts. J. Educ. Psycho!.73:
27-32.
Welker,W. A. 1977. Humor in education: a foundation for wholesome living. College Student
Journa!. 11: 252-254.
Zillman, D. 1980. Acquisition of information
from educational television programs as a
function of differently paced humorous inserts. J. Educ. Psycho!. 72: 170-180.
•
Jeff Pinkham is director of regulatory
affairs for EcoScience, 377 Plantation St.,
Worcester, MA 01605. Once an assistant
professor at Cal Poly in San Luis Obispo,
CA, he has never lost his love of teaching
and frequently lectures on the joy of insects
to schools and colleges in the area.
AMERICAN ENTOMOI.OGIST
•
Winter 1994
(Continued from page 196)
overwhelming temptation to cut through
the cocoons every few years just to see if
their occupants were still alive. I am fairly
certain I could not have accomplished either
feat. I can't even keep track of a Sharpie
marker on my desk for more than a week,
much less 14 years.
It must be said at this juncture that in
none of these studies of insect longevity did
the investigators tamper with the processes
of nature. Studies aimed at prolonging the
lifespan of insects don't figure prominently
in most entomology programs, the vast majority of which in fact have exactly the opposite goal. But there is one group of scientists
who for years have done everything they can
to make insects live longer. If you haven't
been reading journals such as Age, or Experimental Gerontology, or Mechanisms for
Ageing and Development, then you may not
have seen these studies; it turns out that
there are many people who test theories of
aging with insects. This is not surprising in
and of itself from an experimentalist's point
of view, when you think about it; practically
speaking, it's nice to be able to detect a 50%
increase in lifespan when that increase translates to a few days. Studies of long-lived
Amazon parrots or Galapagos tortoises,
with comparable results, could run a century and a half or longer, which, to say the
least, is a lot longer than the average funding
~ycle of most federal agencies. From this perspective, C/unio maritimus (Diptera: Chironomidae) would seem to be the ideal
subject. The so-called one-hour midge has
an adult lifespan of about an hour, give or
take 30 minutes (Neumann D. 1986, Temperature compensation of circasemilunar
timing in the intertitle Clunio. J. Compo
Physio!. A. 163: 671-676)-but
its predilection for saltwater environments and its geographical restriction to coastal areas around
Helgoland, Germany, render it rather difficult to work with.
Instead, most people who study aging
prefer to use other flies, especially Drosophila melmlOgaster, that live a positively
Methusalah-like month or more as adults
and are content to live and breed in artificial
diet or rotten fruit everywhere. Fruit flies
have been exposed to all manner of substances in the interest of prolonging their
lives. Among the substances found to bring
about the desired effect are cortisone (prolongs lifespan 18-43%),
hydrocortisone
(21-39%), aspirin (13-40%), triamcinolone (18%), medofenoxate (7-39%), sodium
thiazolidine-4-carboxylate
(8-14%), 2-ethyl-6-methyl-3-hdyroxypyridine
(18-20%),
ethidium bromide (21 %), lactic acid (15%)
diiodomethane (29%) (R. S. Sohal 1985.
Aging in insects, pp. 595-631. In G. A. Kerfut & L. I. Gilbert [eds.], Comprehensive
insect physiology and biochemistry. Pergammon, London), sodium hypophosphite
(Wadhwa et al. 1988. An antioxidant induced alteration in peroxidase activity in
ageing Zaprionus paravittiger (Diptera),
Mech. Ageing Dev. 45: 277-283), and vitamin E (0. B. Nalcaci & A. N. Bozcuk. 1990.
The effe~ts of vitamin E treatments on the
life-span of Drosophila. Doga Biyol. Serisi
14: 157-163). Even herbal tea may prolong
the life of insects, or at least Musca domestica, the house fly-in particular, the tea prepared from foliage of Centella asiatica, an
umbelliferous
plant of southeast
Asia
known in the area by the exceedingly salable
name of gotu kola. In laboratory experiments, gotu kola appears to increase the
lifespan of house flies by approximately
25% (S. Frankel & M. Berenbaum, personal
observation) (and they say that "Coke adds
life").
One has to wonder what Lord Avebury
would have thought about using artificial
means to prolong inse~t life. Would he have
resorted to any means possible to extend the
lifespan of his ant? How long can an ant
actually live, if assisted? Evidently, it's still
very much an open question. With all of this
newfound gerontological
knowledge in
hand, I just might go ahead and try to answer that question with a study of my own.
I'd start right away, too, except that I need to
write down a few things first and I can't
seem to find my pen....
•
May Berenbaum is a professor and
head of the Department of Entomology,
320 Morrill Hall, 505 S. Goodwin Avenue,
University of Illinois, Urbana, IL 61801.
Currently, she is studying the chemical aspects of interaction between herbivorous
insects and their hosts.
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