Metamorphosis How Insects Are Changing Our World

Entomologist Erica McAlister, the Curator of Diptera at the Natural History Museum, London (NHM), has previously written two popular science books on flies, The Secret Life of Flies and The Inside Out of Flies. Her mission is to change your mind not just about flies, but, as Metamorphosis shows, about insects in general. In her third book with the NHM, she teams up with radio producer Adrian Washbourne with whom she worked on the 10-part BBC Radio 4 series Metamorphosis: How Insects Are Changing Our World that formed the basis for this book. A delightful potpourri of entomology, Metamorphosis is particularly strong on the science history front and further solidifies McAlister's reputation as a science communicator par excellence.

Metamorphosis is the same size as the preceding two books on flies, a small 14 × 20 cm hardback that is illustrated throughout. Its ten chapters, clocking in at 20 pages or fewer, each focus on one particular group of insects that stand out for one reason or another. She examines the biomechanical and biochemical details that allow fleas to jump so far. She explains how Darwin predicted (correctly) the existence of a hawkmoth species with an exceptionally long tongue by examining an equally exceptional orchid. Plus, there is an engrossing chapter on blowflies and their role in forensic entomology, a topic I find particularly fascinating.

The flap text explicitly mentions the book will consider modern applications of entomology. Indeed, each chapter concludes with a brief section on current and expected future applications. There is unsurprisingly a fair amount of robotics here, with fleas and bees inspiring different kinds of miniature robots. The question of how beetles harvest water from coastal fog in the otherwise bone-dry Namib desert has inspired research on new water-repellent surface materials. Other research on moth tongues is informing the development of micro- and nanostraws that could one day result in safely reusable medical needles. Meanwhile, several startups are optimising rearing protocols for black soldier flies that could become the future of animal protein in our food. This would help recycle organic waste and eliminate the environmental impacts of livestock farming. However, it will require finding ways to overcome our disgust of insects and our reluctance to try new food.

The applications, however, come across as a sideshow. Instead, Metamorphosis excels in telling utterly fascinating chapters from the history of entomology. Drosophila (which are not true fruit flies but called vinegar flies) are a widely used model system in biological research. The famous Fly Lab of geneticist and embryologist Thomas Hunt Morgan (1866–1945) pioneered their use. The remarkable part is that he was sceptical of both Darwin's and Mendel's ideas and hoped to disprove them, but ended up doing the exact opposite, finding evidence of classic Mendelian inheritance patterns in certain mutant flies. Or take the story of the remarkable Victorian entomologist Margaret Fountaine (1862–1940) who used the inheritance of an uncle to travel the world solo, amassed an enormous butterfly collection now housed at Norwich Castle Museum, and left a time capsule of twelve notebooks with instructions not to open these until 1978. McAlister & Washbourne also provide an extended backstory to African American entomologist and civil rights activist Charles Henry Turner (1867–1923) who Lars Chittka also featured in The Mind of a Bee. Turner was denied an academic position on grounds of his ethnicity yet staunchly laboured on and made pioneering observations on bee behaviour in particular. He was ahead of his time in refusing to see bees "as simple reflex machines driven by spontaneous reactions to environmental stimuli" (p. 185).

These and other people are vividly brought to life here. The only fly in the ointment is some errors in dates: apothecary James Petiver apparently lived from 1865 to 1718 (he was born somewhere between 1663 and 1665 according to a published chronology), Turner supposedly married his wife in 1896 even though she died in 1895 (they married in 1886), and Turner himself died in 1923 and two pages later in 1958 (the former is correct). Other than reiterating the importance of proofreading numbers, this minor complaint does not diminish the fact that the history-of-science component of Metamorphosis is utterly engrossing. Many of these stories are largely unknown to the general public, with only articles in specialist journals commemorating the achievements of these historical figures. There are several biographies in here waiting to be written and McAlister & Washbourne have the makings of a fine pair of science biographers.

Whether you enjoyed the BBC Radio 4 series when it aired, find yourself in the museum's gift shop wondering whether this book is worthwhile, or nurture an interest in entomology or the history of science (or the intersection of the two), I warmly recommend this little book, especially given the reasonable cover price.