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May/June 2002 issue	In this issue Table of Contents Editor’s Notebook Inside Story Feature: Grasshoppers À la carte Mosaic Reverberations

Friend or foe? | It’s a bug’s life | Grasshopper facts | Grasshopper anatomy
Grasshoppers on film | Nature’s symphony | Literary hoppers | Archives

Dr. Jean-François Landry, entomologist with the CNC, displays a case of butterflies commonly known as “Blues”, from the Lycaenidae family.

This amazing collection was first appointed to James Fletcher, an accountant-turned-entomologist from the Library of Parliament in 1883. Back then it consisted of 12 steel cabinets and 600 drawers. Today it has grown to approximately 15 million specimens systematically arranged in 1,400 steel cabinets, housed on the third and fourth floors of the K.W. Neatby Building of the Eastern Cereal and Oilseed Research Centre in Ottawa, Ontario.

I am here to see the collection as a guest of Dr. Jean-François Landry, an entomologist who has been with the CNC for 16 years. I’ve come to learn more about grasshoppers, but by coincidence we do not have access to the room in which they are kept. But there’s no need to worry; Landry quickly shows me that there is much to learn about this special collection. The first question in my mind is why is it important to have a record of insect diversity?

"It has never been so important and critical as today," says Landry. "In the face of environmental degradation, climatic changes, the alteration and disappearance of natural ecosystems and the increasing spread of alien and introduced organisms, having a long-standing historical record that can be analysed to make comparisons with the present and future state of our environment is vital."

It might seem odd that a collection of this size isn’t housed in a museum. "It was a quirk of fate that the CNC ended up here, separate from the Museum of Nature," says Landry as he leads me from his office. "But the purpose of most collections is to display. The purpose of the CNC is research."

And research these scientists do. "Our projects are usually developed around problems in agriculture (pest species) or biodiversity (endangered species)," says Landry, whose research focuses on the systematics of small moths (Microlepidoptera). In fact, the whole CNC works within the systematics paradigm.

This male parasitic fly (Phryxe pecosensis) has a known distribution from Alaska to California, across the continent to Massachusetts up to Newfoundland.

As he explains the different labels beneath the insects, some written in scrolled letters, some methodically typed, Landry mentions that only about 10 percent of the world’s insects are named. "It is an on-going project to update these old labels," he says, an almost Herculean task since the number of scientists at the CNC has dropped from around 40 to just under 15 over the past decade, due mostly to retirements. The yellowed labels appear brittle compared to the crisp whiteness of the newer labels. But the contrast between old and new is to be expected in an historical collection such as the CNC, which is, in fact, part of Heritage Canada.

The collections are preserved in many different media: "dry" collections, or pinned insects; "wet" collections where the insects are stored in liquid preservative or mounted on slides; and, following the technological times, a special 3-D photography method where the images of some insects are eternally preserved in great detail.

Technology has been a friend to entomologists by other means as well. DNA techniques have proved to be a very useful gadget in the taxonomists’ tool box, says Landry, providing a new group of characters (genes) for studying organisms. But, as Landry points out, DNA data do not provide a substitute for classical taxonomic data — they simply add to them. "It is important to realize that DNA data do not make much sense all by themselves," he says. "They always have to be tied down to specimens and species to be interpreted correctly."

Monodontomerus aerus Walker is a parasitic wasp measuring just over 2 mm in length. Parasitic wasps comprise 80% of the CNC’s entire wasp collection.

You might say some of these parasitic wasps are part of the CNC’s staff. "They are working insects, preying on the eggs of agricultural pests," says Landry, as he leads me from the room and down the hallway.

"The CNC has one of the largest collection of parasitic wasps and bees in the world," he says proudly as he opens the door to another room, this one filled with books, "as well as the largest entomology library in Canada." We browse through the volumes as varied in age as the insects in the building. Landry selects a volume published in 1793 filled with detailed images of butterflies, each plate hand-painted with exquisite perfection. "This volume is worth more than its weight in gold," says Landry, gently closing its aged cover and sliding it back among four other books just like it.

We move from the room and pass an old log book, perched on a shelf next to the library. Landry asks me to sign the old volume, a visitor’s book dating back to 1956. I feel honoured at the request, adding my name to more than 40 years’ worth of visiting scientists and researchers from around the world. I tell Landry that I feel as though I am entering my name into history. He smiles and says, "I guess preserving is what we do best here."

If the entomology bug has bitten you, check out the CNC’s website: res2.agr.ca/ecorc/cnc/.

Insect photography courtesy of Klaus B. Bolte, Natural Resources Canada

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