Dance of the Dung Beetles

Helen Lunn, Marcus Byrne

Description

The humble and industrious dung beetle is a marvellous creature: the 6 000 species identified so far are intricately entwined with human history and scientific endeavour.
These night-soil collectors of the planet have been worshipped as gods, worn as jewellery, and painted by artists. Ecologically, they saved Hawai’i from environmental blight, and rescued Australia from plagues of flies. They fertilise soil, cleanse pastures, steer by the stars, and have a unique relationship with the African elephant (along with many other ungulates). Above all, they are the ideal subject for biological study in an evolving world.
This entertaining outline of the development of science from the beetle’s perspective will enchant general readers and entomologists alike.
Acknowledgements

Introduction

Chapter One When the dung beetle wore golden shoes

Chapter Two Crawling out of the darkness

Chapter Three Joining the dots

Chapter Four Colonising insects

Chapter Five Of elephants and dung beetles

Chapter Six Tribes with human attributes

Chapter Seven Design construction first

Conclusion: ‘What a wonderful world’

Appendices

Select bibliography

Index

Sujets

• Sciences de la nature
• Biologie
• Zoologie
• Science
• 454 Life Sciences
• General
• Zoology
• General officer
• Popular science
• Biology
• Sciences et techniques
• Life Sciences
• Natural History

Informations

• Publié par: WITS University Press
• Date de parution: 01 mars 2019
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781776142361
• Langue: English

Extrait

A brilliant and funny tour through mythology, evolution and the day-today innovations of scientific research, this is an entomological page-turner. ‘If there were no dung beetles,’ Byrne and Lunn write, ‘there might have been no human race ... They literally change the earth beneath us.’ This book reveals that earthly transformation in fascinating and lucid detail.
— Bruce Beasley, Professor of English, Western Washington University
Biology and history dance with the scarabs in this beautiful book with its wide-ranging perspectives on our changing understanding and appreciation of these marvellous creatures.
— Jane Carruthers, Emeritus Professor, Department of History, University of South Africa
... some of the most insightful research on dung beetle behaviour is dealt with in this beautifully written and illustrated book. It is a fitting tribute to these remarkable insects and to the authors who have written about them in a scientifically profound yet charmingly simple way.
— Clarke Scholtz, Emeritus Professor of Entomology, Department of Zoology & Entomology, University of Pretoria
Dance of the Dung Beetles shows the delightful and charming side of the dung beetle enthusiast ... scientifically rigorous and highly readable!
— Sandra Swart, Professor of History, University of Stellenbosch
Marcus Byrne is Professor in the School of Animal, Plant and Environmental Science at the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg and has studied dung beetles for more than 30 years.
Helen Lunn has a PhD in Musicology and has a wide research base. She has worked in academic and popular writing environments.
Dance of the
Dung Beetles
THEIR ROLE IN OUR CHANGING WORLD
MARCUS BYRNE AND HELEN LUNN
Published in South Africa by:
Wits University Press
1 Jan Smuts Avenue
Johannesburg 2001
www.witspress.co.za
© Marcus Byrne and Helen Lunn 2019
Published edition © Wits University Press 2019
Images © Individual copyright holders
Cover image: Kheper nigroaeneus Boheman, 1857
Cover photograph by Chris Collingridge
First published 2019
http://dx.doi.org.10.18772/12019042347
978-1-77614-234-7 (Paperback)
978-1-77614-235-4 (Web PDF)
978-1-77614-236-1 (EPUB)
978-1-77614-274-3 (Mobi)
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the written permission of the publisher, except in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright Act, Act 98 of 1978.
All images remain the property of the copyright holders. The publishers gratefully acknowledge the publishers, institutions and individuals referenced in captions for the use of images. Every effort has been made to locate the original copyright holders of the images reproduced here; please contact Wits University Press in case of any omissions or errors.
Copyeditor: Helen Moffett
Proofreader: Steve Anderson
Indexer: Marlene Burger
Cover design: Hybrid Creative
Page design: Hybrid Creative
Typesetter: Newgen
Typeset in 11 point Crimson
Contents
Acknowledgements
Introduction
Chapter One
When the dung beetle wore golden shoes
Chapter Two
Crawling out of the darkness
Chapter Three
Joining the dots
Chapter Four
Colonising insects
Chapter Five
Of elephants and dung beetles
Chapter Six
Tribes with human attributes
Chapter Seven
Design construction first
Conclusion
‘What a wonderful world’
Appendix A
Appendix B
Notes
Selected bibliography
Index
To our families
Acknowledgements

A WORK THAT EXPLORES DUNG beetles across a seven-thousand-year time span is by definition ambitious. The level of that ambition only became apparent towards the end of the task – probably a good thing, as we might otherwise never have attempted to write this book.
After having dipped into fields ranging from Egyptology to evolutionary biology, a sense of our own shortcomings as writers led us to rely on the expertise and kindness of many specialists. The generosity of the responses of those we approached for comment was heart-warming and enormously helpful. The academic world is filled with experts in specialist fields, and stepping into such terrain can be a nerve-wracking and dangerous affair. Because we skim over areas to which scholars have devoted years of research, there are many sins of omission and commission, along with our obstinate interpretation of the literature. We take full responsibility for these sins, but we would like to thank all of the following for their assistance and very useful observations and commentary.
We are grateful to Salima Ikram, for advice on ancient Egypt, and Claudia Tocco for checking our facts on Ulisse Aldrovandi. Norman Owen-Smith is thanked for his insights on elephant research in Tsavo National Park. Eeva Furmann, widow of Ilkka Hanski, provided details of her late husband’s research at Oxford University. Clarke Scholtz looked over our South African dung beetle accounts, while Penny Edwards gently corrected our errors and lapses of memory surrounding the events and outcomes of the Australian Dung Beetle Project. Marie Dacke and James Foster straightened out our misdirected ideas on beetle orientation and vision, while Leigh Simmons applied valuable selective pressure to the chapter on evolution. Our thanks go as well to John Meyer, who translated a section of Aldrovandi’s De animalibus insectis for us. Chris Collingridge shared his illuminating pictures of dung beetle research. Beautiful beetle pictures were loaned by Adrian Bailey and Shaun Forgie. Thanks are also due to Wits University Press and our publisher Roshan Cader for patience and gentle guidance through the process of producing a book, and delightful gratitude goes to Helen Moffett, our editor, for unstinting energy and good humour, loaded with Beatles puns, at all hours of the day and night.
A final thank-you to all the members of the worldwide community of beetle people for your generosity of thought and time.
Introduction

I N THE SUMMER OF 2009, one of us (Byrne), at least, was having fun. He was in the bush with his friends, playing with dung beetles. These friends, a group of scientists from Sweden, Australia, Germany and South Africa have managed to get together every year since 2003 to run experiments on dung beetle orientation.
We had already shown that dung beetles were the first animals known to be able to orientate by polarised light from the moon. Our next task was to measure how the nocturnal species performed when compared with their diurnal (day-active) counterparts. This involved working all day and most of the night when the moon was in a particular phase, getting slimmer as it waned into a silver sliver lying on its back in the African sky. We were tired but happy. The nocturnal beetles were incredible; they could roll their dung balls in a straight line under a cat’s whisker of a moon.
But when the moon was absent and we relaxed, drinking cold beer under the light of the Milky Way, we were fixated with the sky. If we could see this ethereal light, then surely the beetles could too, and therefore use it for orientation? At the time only humans, along with a few species of birds and seals, were known to be able to orientate by the stars. Our beetle companions were a (relatively) large, enigmatic ball-rolling species called Scarabaeus satyrus . We knew they could do it, but needed to prove it with scientific rigour. The key challenge was to stop the beetles looking at the sky, which is equivalent to asking a goldfish not to swim. How does one stop a beetle looking at the sky? Not so difficult if you fit it with a little peaked cap. But not that easy either when it has no ears to hook things onto, and its head is flat and shiny and has evolved to stop anything sticking to it.
Nevertheless, once their hats were glued precariously in place, the capped beetles were lost, wandering aimlessly with their dung balls, all dressed up and nowhere to go. Ten minutes earlier, the same uncapped individual had streaked across the starlit savanna with the confidence of a taxi driver heading for home. Problem solved – the beetles obviously needed to see the sky to find their way around – but which bit? The night sky, even without the moon, is a complex conglomerate of constantly moving light. Unpicking which part of the sky the beetles needed for pathfinding would reveal the compass cues they were using. This suggested that we should take them on a trip to the planetarium.
Night after night, the dependable beetles enthusiastically pushed dung balls around the Johannesburg planetarium, responding to the pinpricks of light reflected from the domed ceiling with gusto. By systematically removing elements of our ersatz night sky, we were able to conclude that the Milky Way, the very centre of our own galaxy, is part of their nocturnal compass. Consider that a dung beetle hatches inside a cocoon of dung deep underground and spends most of its life grubbing around eating, moulding and transforming faeces beneath the earth; it is nothing short of inspiring to learn that the brilliant band of light that is the Milky Way is the beetle’s reference point when it plots a path through the African night.
The dung beetle has a miniscule brain, much of it devoted to analysing smells, and yet it can process visual information that even humans with their vast brains struggle to comprehend. The contrast between the little insect and the immensity of its visual references reminds us in an oblique way of Hans Christian Andersen’s story about a dung beetle.
It’s a charming story about a rather arrogant little dung beetle who lives in an emperor’s stables. The emperor’s horse is honoured with golden shoes as a result of saving the emperor’s life in battle. Upon seeing his neighbour the horse shod with golden shoes, the dung beetle sticks out his skinny little legs and demands golden s