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A frenzied 30-hour treasure hunt for life’s less lovable species draws scientists and naturalists for collecting, cataloging and carouseling.
by Dan Ferber
Beetlemania
As the sun sets on Virginia’s Great Falls Park, Art Evans puts the finishing touches on a bug-catching contraption he’s rigged near the edge of the woods. He repositions a tripod, fiddles with the flickering blue lantern light mounted on top and adjusts a white sheet hanging behind. Evans is building a black-light trap, an essential tool for his role in a weekend-long “bioblitz” of Potomac Gorge. The intensive scientific treasure hunt—involving 18 teams of scientists and nature lovers and covering 15 miles of the Potomac River valley just outside Washington, D.C.—doesn’t begin until tomorrow, but Evans is getting a jump on the action. If the rain holds off, in a few hours his white sheet should be crawling with beetles of all shapes and sizes.
Evans is a bug guy—specifically a beetle guy, a guy who spouts beetle facts as easily and enthusiastically as other guys talk about last night’s ballgame. By the first grade, Evans had set his sights on becoming an entomologist; by the eighth, he had pinned his first bug to a board; and by the 11th, he was committed specifically to beetles.
Beetles, he has written, “have been one of the most important and consistent driving forces in my life,” although he finds it difficult to explain why. A research associate at the Smithsonian Institution and the Virginia Museum of Natural History, Evans has collected beetles in Central America and Africa and near his home in Richmond, Virginia. In the winter, when beetles are dormant, he dreams about big, colorful beetles hanging like fruit from trees.
To some people, that might sound like a nightmare, but probably not to any of the 135 volunteers assembled for this weekend of frenzied collecting and cataloging. And while finding such obscure and underappreciated organisms as crayfish, flatworms and slime molds certainly tickles the fancy of the scientifically obsessed, it also goes a long way toward helping conserve the biodiversity of the gorge, which harbors a unique cluster of globally rare natural communities.
Over the years, scientists have surveyed the gorge, but past work focused on charismatic creatures, such as birds and mammals. “We realized there was missing information,” says Stephanie Flack, who directs The Nature Conservancy’s projects in the gorge. “That was the origin of the bioblitz.” She and the National Park Service, which manages much of the area, asked Evans to round up the folks who could fill in the blanks.
Each of this weekend’s 18 teams will focus on one taxonomic group (such as algae, spiders or flies). Each team speaks its own dialect of the biological mother tongue, and each has its own customs. But despite these differences, there’s a camaraderie and reunionlike atmosphere. A bioblitz is “a lot about connections and visiting with other people and running into folks I’ve heard about and looking over the parasitologist’s shoulder to say, ‘Oh, this is what that looks like,’” says Sam Droege, a biologist at the U.S. Geological Survey’s Patuxent Wildlife Research Center, who helped organize the world’s first bioblitz in 1996. He likens the event to a science “party”—one that includes friendly competition. “Instead of coming back with the 16-point buck, you come back with the new rare bee or the longest list or the coolest thing,” says Droege, who is leading the ant and bee team this time.
For his part, Evans is leading a team of eight fellow beetle fanatics in what he describes as “a race against the clock.” And he can’t wait to get started. With the sunlight fading, he’s walking the trail, whacking tree branches with a stick, catching what falls off on a canvas sheet. He recognizes a particular species of firefly hovering near the low branch of a tree and points it out to Cristina Francois.
Francois is a 25-year-old graduate student, but she may as well be a kid tonight. This is her first firefly, and as she chases and catches it, she squeals with delight. (Lightning bugs live only in humid areas, and she’s lived her whole life in Southern California.) Francois is used to getting insect instruction from Evans. He’s been her mentor for eight years, ever since she shadowed him as a high school senior for a career-planning project. “Who would have thought you could do this kind of stuff for a living?” she says, laughing. These days, she researches moth diversity at California State University at Fullerton. When the bioblitz gets going in the morning, she’ll be with the “lep team”—short for Lepidoptera, the Latin term used for butterflies and moths. But tonight, she’s hanging out with the beetle team for black lighting and bonding.
A firefly dives, getting brighter as it descends, then jogs upward and abruptly shuts off its light. “There are people who know infinitely more about fireflies than I do,” Evans says. Then he breaks into a minilecture, telling Francois about the different Morse codes of flashes and pauses that distinguish firefly species, and about a particularly ferocious female firefly that lures males of other species by imitating their codes. They approach, looking for a date, then she eats them. When she’s sated, she switches signals and lures males of her own species to mate. Francois laughs. “Cool!”
Moments later, Evans is back at the black-light trap with another protégé, 16-year-old Chris Wirth. The two are sucking insects off the white sheet with aspirators, then transferring the bugs into jars for later identification. (Beetle types can be identified only under the microscope.) Evans loves mentoring young scientists: “The time I spend with students helps me keep a fresh eye on things.”
All eyes are now on one of the team’s hanging sheets. Beetles of every kind, drawn by the light, swarm over it. A toad moves in and jumps repeatedly to nab them. “We have competition,” says one of the beetle people.
