The Weekly Dormouse. (aka Bike, est. 2007) Part 3421 by Angharad Copyright© 2024 Angharad

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This is a work of fiction any mention of real people, places or institutions is purely coincidental and does not imply that they are as suggested in the story.
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"So the plastron acts like an air tank for those insects that use them and we know enough about them, to learn that the insects even seem to know about the angle of contact when piercing the water surface, a high angle means that they don't get the body wet whereas a low body angle does wet them more. Now I know of no insect who took geometry lessons, but they seem to know instinctively, in the same way that Dytiscus the genera of diving beetles when it wants a refill of air which is stored under the elytra or wing cases, so the spiracles used are posterior ones and the beetle rises up tail-first, stocks up its plastron or aqualung and is good to go again, and because the plastron acts like a gill, in allowing the exchange of gases, we term it an external gill."

I viewed all the astonished faces, I had shown them slides of plastrons in different taxa, gills in species of Ephemeroptera, some of which are covered over others on display, How in caddis larvae, the gills don't help them breathe directly, they are waved in an undulating fashion and increase the throughput of water through the case, thereby enabling the caddis to access more oxygen from the water.
I hoped I had engaged them enough to show that mere bugs were actually quite complex animal forms, most of which were actually well adapted to their environment. I had slides that I had prepared showing the plastrons, or the special development of the cuticle to carry all the vascular tubes in the walls of some insect larvae. I pointed out that virtually all aquatic insects had returned to the water having lived a terrestrial existence at one time, and that another adaptation was the different generations by having larvae and perhaps pupae too, and terrestrial adults meant that they weren't in competition for food sources. As an aside I mentioned that greater horseshoe bats also ate in different areas than the young, once the latter were weaned and hunting for themselves, so again there is reduced competition for food. Evolution is brilliant when it works but it also creates dead ends, and we have seen in fossil remains where either the animal or plant became too specialised and were unable to adapt to habitat change and thus became extinct. I gave them the concept that man was destroying the very planet he depended on by showing a cartoon of a man sitting on a branch, quite high up a tree and sawing it off close to the trunk, with the caption, 'But I need the firewood.'

One of the technicians has been breeding some aquatic insects in aerated tanks, some of which have a stream of water running through them. We have post-grad students doing experiments on them and one or two of the teaching staff like to keep their hands in. We do release a few into a pond in the park, but sadly many will be science fodder, I hope all that perish will help us learn something about them or their lifestyle which will enable us to help them, as a species, to survive the global warming that is happening which will affect aquatic animals perhaps extensively as water holes and rivers dry up in droughts or get washed out by torrential rains.

Then again, while trying to relate the dangers of global warming, I also try to point out that the Ephemeroptera or mayflies evolved somewhere in the Carboniferous, so did the Odonata or dragonflies, so they have survived several environment changes over the millennia, humans may not be as well adapted, we'll see. Several climate experts are saying we are already above where we need to be to manage 1.5 degrees Celsius, which was regarded as the last safe rise. So who knows what will eventually happen, but those who are making political capital out of migration, and are total humbugs, will have a shock when migration rises ten or twenty fold as the planet becomes unable to sustain them or their animals or crops. The UK may be tolerable as temperatures rise, but those who have purchased homes built on flood plains may well regret it. Like everything in this country, the people doing things for government couldn't organise a piss-up in a brewery.

I got the technician to demonstrate his freshwater kingdom. so some students could actually see some of the animals I had talked about living and showing how they lived to some curious humans.

I was asked about the government allowing the use of a neonicotinoid which kills bees and which was banned in 2018 for use in sugar beet growing despite the beet farmers promising to stop its use by 2023. I was horrified and would like to see such chemicals banned for all time, unless they exterminate politicians, the real pests. This led to a quick discussion on the UK government failing to improve the environment in any of its promises to do so. My students had a very poor opinion of politicians and threatened not to vote. I told them if they vote they can feel they tried to change things, if they don't then the rotten politicians win. I always vote because people died to enable me to do so, and by not doing so, I would be disrespecting the suffragettes who fought so hard to enfranchise women.

Someone asked me personally, if I'd changed sex and women didn't have the vote, would I have lost mine? It seemed they knew of my changeover. I replied by telling them if simple human rights like universal adult suffrage weren't available, then probably the right to change gender wouldn't be either - a chilling thought, though things like this only happen in banana republics like the United States under Republican rule.

I came away feeling that I had done what I needed to in covering for a colleague and thought I could probably do it again if necessary, though we really need to do a field trip to see the animals in their own environment, not a mock up of one run by lab technicians.

Sorry, it's shorter than recent efforts but I was out all day geologising at an AGM, it was a good day with some interesting speakers and very nice buffet lunch of which I ate too much. Since my return I have been engaged in unarmed combat with two killer kittens.