By Whitney Johnson, Director of Visual and Immersive Experiences, March 19, 2021
PHOTOGRAPHS BY CRAIG CUTLER AND BRIAN BROWN
The food was putrid. The entomologists stocked up.
It wasn’t for them, but for the flying creatures they—and Nat Geo photographer Craig Cutler—hoped to attract high up in the canopy of the Amazon. Using trap cameras on a 131-foot tower in Brazil (pictured below left), the scientists, including Nat Geo Explorer Stephen Marshall, found hundreds of new species.
For readers of April’s issue of National Geographic, that means we get to see flying insects like we’ve never seen before.
Pictured above is an iridescent orchid bee, a tropical cousin of the bumblebee and honeybee. Read on to see, very close up, the beauty of a chalcidid wasp, a jewel beetle, and a weevil.
| Changing it up: Instead of studying life on the ground, these entomologists looked at insects along different levels of the research tower, at left. Above right, Brian Brown prepares to suck a phorid fly into a tube to study. He has spritzed leaves with diluted honey to attract the flies—and the bees they attack. “How many people,” he asks, “would voluntarily sweat in the forest surrounded by bees and wasps?“ |
Teensy: Usually smaller than a grain of rice, chalcidid wasps inject their eggs into other insects, which die after the eggs hatch and the new larvae start to feed on their hosts. The fuzzy-jointed antennae on the wasps’ faces help them hunt victims.
| Hard to catch: Jewel beetles have massive eyes. Their watchfulness means they can flee from predators quickly, so they’re difficult for researchers to collect. |
That’s a schnoz: Known for its elongated snout, the weevil belongs to one of the largest groups of insects. This weevil’s iridescent neck, created by the flattening of hairlike structures, probably serves to attract mates or confuse predators.
In reaching out to Nat Geo photographer Cutler in 2019, Brown acknowledged that flies might not be the glamour creatures that people expect, “but that is largely due to our inability to portray them effectively." In this story, at least, they’re portrayed very effectively.
But glamorous? Well, you tell me.
(Sources: National Geographic)
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