 have parts of the conference to unpack more. What's going to happen now is we're going to go back to Laundorina in just a moment, where this is one of my favorite parts of Nobel. They put the entire panel of everyone who's going to speak at the whole conference up together on stage to answer questions, which, by the way, you can submit by emailing nobelconference at gastavis.edu to submit your own questions. And then those will be brought to both the speaker who just spoke, but then all the other speakers who all have. And so we'll get to actually see not just the presentation, but them hashing this stuff out in real time, which is kind of thrilling for a science conference to actually see these folks interact and see where they agree and disagree. So with that, I'm going to throw it back to Laundorina, and we will be back after the panel discussion. Welcome back. Welcome back. We'll start our first discussion. We've been joined by all of our august panel of presenters. And to start the questioning, I just wanted to tell you who you're going to be hearing from. So joining on Sverdorup Tugason and me and Margaret on stage are Jonathan Birch of the London School of Economics right in the middle. There are some philosophy fans in the room, clearly. Saganet Kalamu of the International Center of Insect Physiology and Ecology, Julie Lesnick of Wayne State University, Shannon Olson of the ECON Network, Jessica Ware of the American Museum of Natural History, and Michael Yavrakafeller University. So Margaret will serve as our moderator for the panel. Thank you. Thank you for the talk. So I'm going to start with using the word love, and that I'm going to maybe you can deepen or clarify that. But I'm wondering if members of the panel could say a few words how each of the topics that you study connects with the idea of loving insects. Who do you want to start? Pardon? Who would you like to start? I think you can, I guess the person who first feels like they've got an answer put together in their head. I can talk about loving insects at any time. I think this will be a theme in my talk later as well, that I think we struggle a great deal to empathize with insect. We empathize so wonderfully with cats and dogs and other mammals, because they have big faces, big eyes. We see ourselves in them, and this makes it very easy to empathize with them. When we're looking at animals that are much more distant from us in evolutionary terms, like insects, separated from us by over 500 million years of evolution, we have these empathy failures. We struggle to see them as beings living their own lives. And this is something we have to work to overcome. So I wouldn't personally say I love insects literally, because I struggle with this myself just like everyone else does. I love people, I love cats and dogs. It's not so easy with insects, but it's something we all have to work on to try and take them seriously to realize that they're just as real as mammals, that they feel things just as much. Thank you. I would say I definitely love dragonflies. Like, I feel they love, that I feel for a cattle dog, for dragonflies, for sure. Maybe not lice, maybe not please. So maybe insects are so vast, we could say that there are some that we feel kind of a true love for, and others that I appreciate what bedbugs do. I appreciate they have traumatic insemination. That's remarkable. I appreciate their life history strategies. I don't love them. But dragonflies, I love. I mean, I love everything about them. So maybe it's like an insect by insect basis. Just an observation, when you think about it, we wouldn't say, you know, I love minerals or something. You know what I mean? Like, it's so much faster a category than to say we love cats or dogs, or even then we love mammals. And of course, I would never say I love mammals. I love no rats, for instance. Sorry, Margaret. I think love is also a really strong emotion, and it's a really human one. So I'd like to kind of take apart that notion of love, right? Love starts with value, right? It starts with valuing. If you love someone, we also value them. And to value them, we have to find them important to our lives. And to find them important to our lives, we have to relate to them. So I think of breaking down our relationship with any organism that's not human from a point of, how do they relate to our world? And then how are they important to us? And then how can we value that relationship? And maybe it doesn't have to get into love, the way I love my husband or my daughter. But that deep valuation, I think, is what is most important for humanity to do right now when it comes to insects. Because we need to value them for us, for our own survival, as Anna so beautifully said in her talk. So maybe that's how I would take that idea of love. I think we're very prejudiced sometimes in the way we discriminate between different insects. So bees versus wasps, for example, I find a strange one. People love bees, hate wasps. They're not that different. I think we need to be trying to empathize with wasps as well. Yeah? Anyone else? Yeah, so I think apart you'd hear from me tomorrow, apart from advocating eating them, I think we have to appreciate and admire the role that, and understand the role insects play in our lives, in our ecosystems. And so we have to be, if we want to be gentler, kinder to our environment and to ourselves, we have to be kinder and gentler to insects. Even those that we consider are harmful, they all play a role in our ecosystem. And so we teach our kids, oh, you see a cockroach or stomp on it, or kill this insect. So I think we have to refrain from that and teach and learn more about insects and the role that they play in our lives. We need them. I think the speaker has articulated this in a very eloquent way. So at the end of this conference, perhaps all of us would have a depth of gratitude and appreciation for insects and love. And who wouldn't love butterflies? I think if we want to start loving, so the good start is butterflies. So I love cicadas. Wow. Cicadas means summer. And, you know, they just bring the summer alive. You know, when you're just waking up and they start rattling around in the trees, we have a place in New Mexico, and I can remember a few years ago, thousands of cicadas would be in the evergreen trees. And, you know, cicadas means summer. And for me, I've always enjoyed summer. So my favorite insect. I think I came to love insects through a different route because I came through primatology and studying chimpanzees who eat termites. And in primatology, it's kind of funny because with chimpanzees, they're so charismatic, right? They use tools, they're funny, and so everybody loves chimpanzees and we study them more than other primates. So unfortunately for that, there's a bit of a bias. And then in digging into my research on them eating termites, I start falling in love with the charismatic termites or the architects and their fungus farmers and then I start kind of realizing that they're similarly like the charismatic insect that a lot of people fall in love with first. And so that for me was, it's termites, they're just, they have so many more skills than you could even imagine. Thank you. So I have a question about how do you think, this is a question specifically for Anne after your talk, how do you think the ecosystem of North America would be different if honeybees had not come here? Many people think honeybees are indigenous to the North America, they're not, they were introduced. Can you talk in general terms about, you know, what if they hadn't come here? Ha, yeah, I guess. It's hard to know where in time to sort of start talking from because of course today, like in Central Valley of California, you have these huge almond tree plantations that are really devoid of all natural pollinators because there is just almond trees forever and ever as far as you can see in all directions. And definitely no dead almond trees, only living almond trees I'm sure, as you said. Yeah, yeah, but in order to have those trees, you know, to pollinate those trees, today you are dependent on bringing in the honeybees because of the way it is produced, it is so intensively rigged. So the natural vegetation is pretty much taken away because that interferes with almond production. And then of course, so if you were taking away the honeybees today, that would be really bad for part of the production because you have already, part of the natural pollinators are lost already. But I think another point is this sort of subtle competition between the pollinating species, which is also something we are still learning a lot about, how they can actually trigger each other to, they fly in different, when they pollinate, for instance an apple tree, they will fly to different parts of the tree and if there are more pollinator species present, they will trigger the other ones to fly in different patterns. For instance, just on the lower side of the canopy of the flower trees, for instance, or just on the upper part. So bringing in one species in such amounts have certainly changed the pollinator community and the services, but I think it's hard to say, to sum it up in any way. And I guess the third thing to mention is the fact that honey bees, just like some bubble bees that have been imported from Europe, bring diseases, which is really, really sad. It reminds us of other stories of two-legged creatures coming to new continents, bringing diseases that they were immune to, that the indigenous organisms were not. So it has huge effects on the native US bumble bees or also even more in South America, I think. So it's complex and in a way I think they're here. So right now it's a question of finding out how to deal with that and how to avoid further negative effects and to take care of the natural pollinating community. Thank you. I wanted to ask if any presenters had questions for Anne. Yes, I'd be glad to ask Anne a question. So Anne, there was two sides to your talk in a way. There was the celebratory side of how wonderful insects are and what all the great things they do for us, how useful they are, and also this melancholic side about we're destroying the natural environment at alarming speed. Wild insect populations are taking a huge hit. We can't be sure what the future holds. I just wanted to ask you how bad do you think things are? What do you see the future holding here? How bad is the situation currently? Ah, that's a difficult question. I mean, insects will certainly be around. I think they will be there to decompose the last vertebrate carcass sometime way into the future because, yeah, they have stayed for so long. There are so many they are, so they will outlive us, but, and that's not really the question. I think we are starting to see negative effects of the changes in the insect communities and I think, and that is why I, in my outreach, I try to combine this, the fun facts and hoping to trigger fascination for insects and people while also adding this sort of more somber note because I really want people to get engaged and to care for these insects. I mean, we know, for instance, that the area where we produce crops that need pollination, insect pollination, they have increased more than the crop has increased and one explanation for that is the lack of proper pollination services. So we are starting to see this, we are also combined with climate change, starting to see these ecological mismatches when, you know, the birds have chicks in a part of the summer when the insects that they are supposed to eat are not yet swarming. It's just because some things might be triggered by day length and other processes in nature, in ecology, are triggered by temperature and of course we change temperature but we don't change day length. So they sort of come apart and we are starting to see signs of that too. So I don't know, these questions, you can answer them in so many ways. I really think it's important to leave people with hope that there is a lot we can do. Really, there is a lot we can do but we need to start doing it, not just talking about it, we need to follow up, for instance, on the huge agreement from Montreal last December. We need to follow up all those wonderful speeches and the agreement between all the countries on biodiversity and taking care of nature and the species with some action. What would be your top tips for people in this room wondering what they can do to help conserve insects? Getting engaged, I think, I mean through learning about insects and speak nicely about them, to your friends, your fellow students or whatever, your neighbours, your roommates, I think that is actually the most important thing we can do because coming from that is all the other, there's this saying, actually I think it is from the Bible, that what your heart is full of, your mouth will speak, something like that, it's probably not exactly the right translation, but I think, and this is back to love again, if you or value these things you care about, you will talk about and that triggers engagement and that again triggers action. And so I think I would start there. Other questions? Yes, Saganit. Yeah. So you, as you correctly indicated, there is a decline in insect population. A few years ago, Time magazine also featured not only the decline of insects, but also the shortage of insect scientists. So and there is a shortage of entomologists, so how do we, how do you suggest that we inspire students, here there are high school students, university students, more the best and the brightest to go into insect science? I guess we need people knowing about insects in a lot of different disciplines in order to help out in this respect too. I mean, of course biologists and entomologists study insects, but I think it's also important that people in, you know, the humanities and the social sciences and whatever also know about insects and appreciate insects because they are related to so many other parts of what we need to work with. I mean, like insects for food, that involves many other disciplines than entomology, of course. And I think that brings up, and I like philosophy, I mean, it brings up questions. If we are to eat them, I mean, how should we kill them to be blunt? In a way, that is nice if you can put such a word on it. So, and I mean, you need people from very many other disciplines to know about insects, to know what they're good for, and to speak up for them in different, a lot of different interdisciplinary settings. I think that's, so even if you're sort of majoring in something else, I would encourage you to, at least start to look for insects and see them when they are around in the arable or wherever. There are lots of them. I just went for a walk yesterday. I see some right up here, flying around, watching. Yes, I saw that. So maybe another question I would ask of any of you is, you know, we tend to talk about insects as being good or bad. We've been hearing a lot about this really steep decline in insect populations, and yet we're seeing in this region the rise of the emerald ash borer. So when we're talking about insect declines, are all insects declining? Is there a reason to be particularly concerned about some populations rather than others? You know, do we want to discern it all about that? It's okay. But I will say, let's make my voice stop coughing. We miss a lot of information about certain insect groups than others. We don't really know what's happening with aquatic insects. We know too much about the beautiful ones and far fewer things about earwigs and things like that. Thank you. So there's some groups or populations that seem to be, okay. If I could add to that, I think at least in the boreal parts of the world, boreal parts of Europe for sure, and I would guess it's quite similar in the boreal parts of North America, there are two main functional groups that have a hard time. And one is of course the pollinators that we usually talk about. And the other is these beloved janitor insects of mine, the insects living in Deadwood, that gets a lot less focus. So, and that makes, it's very logical because of course in forests we take out the timber because we use it for lots of different things ourselves. And then we, for once we are sort of very much competing, we are taking out the food that they need to live in and to eat. And this has consequences that is much less studied and much less focused as I said. And definitely there is a bias, a geographical bias, I mean it's pretty much in Europe and I guess Northern America. We know a lot more about those areas than the tropics and the global south. It's also a strange phenomenon to me that we talk about the good and the bad of insects, like that's exceptional to anything else in our planet, right? When you take the sun, the sun we couldn't live without, it also causes burns, it also can cause skin cancer, water we absolutely need to survive, it also can drown us, it also can destroy our homes. So why should insects be any different? They are both good and bad to us as they are good and bad to a plant or to anything else on this planet. That balance is essential for nature. And so when we talk about insect declines, in a way it's kind of a moot point because it doesn't matter, it doesn't matter if it's only the mosquitoes going away or only the butterflies going away, they should not be going away at all, just like we need our sun and our water. It's strange for me in some ways, it's wonderful we're having this conference, but having a conference about something that's so essential to our survival, it would be like, let's talk about food and how important food is, and it would be ridiculous. We'd be like, why are we having this meeting? And I hope that someday through this effort and others that we won't think about insects as something that's maybe important, like we think about water. It's a lovely feature around this talk. This emphasis that even parasitic wasps are extremely important. When you think of them as perhaps some of the most horrible in terms of how they treat other insects, but they have a function in the ecosystem that we need to take seriously. One of the things that we really wanted to focus on today was the fact that it isn't all about us, right? Margaret was really insistent when we organized this conference to say, let's not start the conference by thinking about, how do honeybees help us? How do other insects help us? How do, you know, but rather, can we try to set ourselves aside a little bit? And so I really appreciate this discussion, Jonathan. I mean, one source of real concern is the pollinators, as Anne was describing, and wild bee populations, which have been a major source of concern in Europe for a long time, but it's a source of concern in the US as well. One confusion here sometimes is that people mix honeybees in with this and think that honeybees are the issue. Honeybees are domesticated species, essentially, that we control, to a large extent, the vast majority of them. What we've got to really worry about is the wild bee populations that are outside of our control and that it's very hard to track the numbers of and that seem to have been collapsing. That's a nice point at which to mention that one of the talks, or one of the panel sessions that you can go to during the lunch hour, is, in fact, about the wild bee census that was just completed in the state of Minnesota last fall, or maybe during the spring. So if you're interested and concerned about the particular plight of wild bee species in Minnesota, of which there are, Margaret, something like 10,000? I'm sorry. It's a number, so I've, of course, forgotten it. There are vast numbers of bee species in Minnesota, and you can go and learn more about exactly what Jonathan is talking about. Honeybees, if you order a hive of honeybees, they come to you as livestock, so I think that's evidence of exactly what you're saying. They are not a wild species. They're a domesticated species. I have sort of a follow-up question for the entomologists on the panel in talking about trying to appreciate insects for all they are and just making it normal, like water and food. But in kind of US history, world history with industrialization and then chemical pesticides, it seems like we industrially demonized insects on a whole because of their view as pests. And I've been to a couple of entomology conferences, have been invited to speak, and I'm just surprised at how many people are employed by pesticide companies and how much Monsanto is sponsoring the coffee. And so I'm just wondering, how can we change this dialogue when within entomology, they're barely celebrating insects for what they are, or at least that's sort of what I had seen. Well, one thing I might say is that it's really a complicated issue. As someone who, I'm the past president of Antrimological Society of America, it's the largest insect organization in the world, our coffee is sponsored by Monsanto, and it is a very complicated thing as a system, and this is an evolutionary biologist who really focuses on biodiversity. But one thing I have found from talking with my colleagues who work in integrated pest management is that food security and human survival is something that they feel very passionately about. Medical and veterinary entomology is something that we can take for, I mean, there was malaria cases in the United States this summer, but in general, we don't have to put our kids to sleep worrying that they're going to have malaria, and many of our peers in other countries don't face that same concern. So there's a reason why there's such an emphasis on kind of pest management, and they would argue they got into insects because they got into entomology because they love insects just like we love insects. They just happen to be more fascinated with pest management. Now, I can say those words, but then I ask someone who studies insect decline, and I know that insecticide use is one of the drivers of insect decline. It is very hard to fall asleep with a cover over your shoulder knowing that there's these two halves of your discipline really that maybe are working with different goals in mind. And so I think it's a very complicated layer, and I think it really has a lot to do with where we're born, the types of priorities that we might have. It's tricky. It's great to reflect on these issues. It's great that you're reflecting on the role of industry funding here and the way it might lead to potentially perverse incentives for the science and the need to try and keep the science free of this as an independent voice. It's tough, yeah, yeah, yeah. So I'm going to read this because this is a bit longer. There is a theme here that was also present in the 2006 Nobel conference, our global ocean, in which scientists remarked that they did the work of discovery, revealing the threats and challenges to our ecosystems, and they expected the world to respond with equal measure of concern and activism. But sadly, that's not been the case. So what do you think people should do to affect powerful environmental change as it seems scientific research findings might not be sufficient? Or I'll drink to me. It's a softball question. Can you repeat the end of that again? I sure can. It's a good idea, stalling for time. I like it. I'm fine, I'm fine. So with the information that's been generated from scientific discovery, this expectation that there should be equal measure of concern and activism in response to insect declines, what do you think people should do to affect powerful environmental change as it seems the scientific results may not be sufficient to do that? Can I start? This is what I am doing now with my life. I think actually it's something that we up here on this podium have to do more of. I think we need to listen more. I think we need to listen more why these changes are not happening. What is the limitation that people have? I mean why is it that they don't accept insects as important as food and water and things like this? And you have to come to a place of commonality. It goes back to what I said at the beginning about value and awareness. And I think that we need to have much, much more dialogue. I think we don't have enough dialogue between our pesticide companies and our conservation entomologists, for example. I've been to these same ESA meetings. I think that we are thought to have opinions and claim this is the way things have to happen. And I don't think that there's one way that this planet needs to improve. I think there's a million ways it needs to improve in every individual community, honestly in every individual home. And there's many things that people can do, but this has to start from a place of understanding. And that can only come through dialogue and listening. And so I'm really happy that this college also teaches that because I think that's one of the most essential skills that we can have. And I think we scientists don't do it well enough. I would add that people should vote with insects in mind because I can make a lot of personal decisions, not to give away my talk conclusion on Wednesday. I can make a lot of personal decisions. We can all make a lot of personal decisions that will have local impact, but the people who are making the majority of the impact on a global scale that affects our neighbors in the global south and people worldwide are the people who we are electing into positions of power. So I have said in my town council, when they have their debate, whenever there's going to be someone elected to town council, I ask them about insects and they say, that's a national issue. No, it's a local issue, right? We should hold all of our elected officials accountable. They should all be talking about insects. And we should elect people who care about insects and green spaces. Yeah, I think this is a really important question. So this is what we do at my institution on a daily basis. So one is investment in communication. Communication, the value of communication cannot be overstated. And we have to adjust the language of science to mainstreaming so that we can communicate with the general public, with the policy makers. And influencing policy is extremely important to get this out, to influence policies that is environmentally friendly, climate change friendly, adverse, and insect science and science in general, also friendly. So these are the three areas we do to really make impact and to influence policy. And I will talk a little bit about it tomorrow. And it's very important. And I think the speaker also earlier mentioned about not everybody has to be an entomologist. In fact, in my institution, it's a multidisciplinary team of social scientists, economists, even anthropologists, and many different people, combined together to take the science to impact, to change lives in reality, in real time. Thank you. So I'm hearing that as people go to lunch and go to sessions this afternoon, that you should be talking to each other about insects and why they matter in your lives and what you might do to support them. Great, yeah. Yeah, I think one very important idea in this area is to try and move past seeing these issues in terms of a conflict between human interests and the interests of the environment or animals. Really, that's not the opposition here. I mean, the real opposition has the interests of humans and animals and the environment all on one side and certain corporate interests on the other side. And this can be very difficult to change, very hard to overcome. But once you start seeing the opposition in those terms and seeing the difficulties in those terms, it becomes easier to see how it's a matter of our common interest, not a matter of pitting human interest against those of animals. Margaret is looking at me, which gives me permission to ask whatever I want, apparently, excellent. So I'm interested, can we switch gears just a little bit to talk about some unintended consequences and Anna, this is maybe digging into your talk just a little tiny bit. You talked about the non-native dung beetles being introduced into Australia and many of us who live in houses in Minnesota think of the introduction of the non-native Asian lady beetle into apparently my very own personal home. They were brought in, of course, to eat aphids. There have been unintended consequences of those. They're not terrible. I mean, they smell bad and they bite a little bit and they leave red stains on your windowsills. It's not the worst thing that ever happened, but they're annoying. Can you talk a little bit about were there specific unintended consequences there? And in general, per what Jonathan just said, is unintended consequences a really short-sighted, limited, limiting way to think about the introduction of a species by humans into a new context. Was that a long enough question? Yeah, I think so. I think the dung beetle example from Australia is one of the few, in a way, it's not a very pedagogic example to use because it's one of the few examples of a successful introduction of a species. Really? Wow. I mean, usually it doesn't go very well. I mean, think of the cane-toed in Australia or the rabbits in Australia. Lots of other examples. Goat in the Galapagos. Yes. I saw you had signs over here about the emerald ash borer. Borer, yes. So, but I guess that one was not an, that wasn't an intended introduction, but like the rabbits were and the cane-toed was. So, I think today you would rather not bring the cows to Australia than to bring those dung beetles from other tropical countries that they did back then. I mean, you would hope that you could stop earlier, but of course, this is one of the really big and complicated issues. The IPBS, the sort of sister panel of the IPCC. Would you give out, I had not heard of that acronym before you introduced it to me on our... IPBS, the International Biodiversity, the Intergovernmental Panel on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services, something like that. It's called the Nature Panel in Norwegian. That is much more easy. The Climate Panel and the Nature Panel. So, the Nature Panel just had this event presenting their last report that was on Introduced Species and it's becoming more and more of a problem. So, and it's one of these interesting cases where we meet ourselves in the door because so many things have been done already. And then what do we do about it? If we have introduced something that is a problem in the ecosystem, should we then also introduce an enemy, a predator or a parasite to that species and hope that goes well? And I think, I don't have an answer. And I think, again, it comes back to more people knowing about these things because this is complicated and that is why we need to discuss it more. We need more people to engage in decisions like this and then they need to have sort of a minimum basic understanding of introduced species, ecology, insects, parasites, all of this. So, I'm not sure if that was exactly an answer to your question. It's a fair answer. I wonder if anybody else has thoughts about this. It feels like this question. Well, let me tell you an anecdote. There's a map, a very famous map of Minnesota that is called the original vegetation of Minnesota. And every time I see this map, it makes me laugh because I think what Adam and Eve were in Minnesota, like what do we mean by original vegetation? And of course what it means is at the time when European colonists were exploring this land, these are the things we found here. That was that moment, that moment in time for us that comes to be like ground zero, a moment zero that we care about above all other moments. And so if we really think of humans as animals and we think about the particular ways we can introduce things that are different from, say, birds or insects or snakes or why can't I think of the word for mice, you know, mice and rats. And Jeff? Yes, thank you. I'm a philosopher, remember. So we are animals that introduce things into regions. So how do we, I mean, how do we, in the large sense, how do we think about this problem? I mean, I think we have to also be a little careful here. I think it's nice to sit on the stage and be on our high horse and say we should not do damage to the environment, okay? But people often, I work a lot with agriculture and people often ask me, how do you do agriculture ecologically? And I always say stop because there is no fundamental way to do agriculture ecologically because it's not an ecological process, it's a human process, right? But we have to live. We have to feed, I work in India, we have to feed 1.4 billion people in one country. I mean, you can't tell people don't grow food and we have to be respectful that people also have to get their livelihoods. They also have to, and especially the people that aren't on the stage who don't have any power, right? They're often the ones suffering from these effects on the climate. So I think we talk about these, we often have to talk about minimizing the damage, minimizing our footprint, treading as lightly as we can, but we can't just stop, it's not possible. We are eight, some billion people now, right? And we have to live, we have to work, we have to have the next generation. And we have to be respectful of that too. And so it's a very delicate game where we have to be careful also not to risk the loss of equity for the people that rely on this land for their survival. Jessica. Yeah, I would just follow up and say, I was just in Guyana doing some field work in South America and I was working with two of my friends and colleagues there who are part of the Makushi tribal nation, Kenneth Butler and Susan George. We were having a conversation with some students that I had brought down about the way that they do agriculture in a very dry Savannah habitat. And Kenneth said, I'll paraphrase him, but he said, my grandfather always said, do you have to plant 70% of your crop for yourself and 30% of the crop for insects because insects will always come. And the students who I brought from the American Museum were just very surprised by that because of course that's not the way that we do agriculture in the United States. Everything is supposed to be for us. And when insects come to take any of it, then we do everything we can to destroy them. And it was just a very different philosophy, right? That we know insects and humans are gonna compete for the resource, so plant more for the insects to consume. I think it's maybe, as you're saying, there's different ways that we could do agriculture that might be more sustainable. The question is, would you be willing to forgo some profit to do it that way? I don't know if humans would. Yeah, I think it's really wonderful to have perspectives from the global south in these conversations. It's really, really important. I do think obviously as someone from the global north, US, Europe, a special responsibility falls on us to try and show leadership on these questions because it's economically richer, we're in a position to do more, we're in a position to try and lead the development of more sustainable forms of agriculture. So it's really crucial that we actually do that rather than doing the reverse, which is exporting very unsustainable methods, very intensive methods to the global south where previously more sustainable methods existed. Can I just respectfully argue here a little bit? I think we also have to reduce this notion of exporting ideas anywhere. People in these places have been living there for hundreds of years. They have their own ideas, okay? They actually know a lot about how to live on their land. I think there's actually a lot, as you've learned, and as I've been learning working in India, there's a lot that we can learn from the people that are already living there to live more in harmony with their nature, and I think they have a lot to teach us white people up in the north actually, okay? Of course, I mean, we're failing to disagree well because I totally agree with what you just said, but my fear is really the imposition of intensive systems we've developed here on countries in the global south that would be much better off without them, and we have a troubled history in this regard. Yeah, all right. To take this just a different direction and go back to insects in the humanities, like studying insects in the humanities, with humans moving insects around, it actually gives us a chance to use insects as a way of seeing the human footprint in instances where you can't see the humans, and so I actually have a PhD student who's done now, Dr. Kelsey Jorgensen, but she studied potato agriculture and spread in the Andes by studying the phylogeny of the Andean potato weevil, the primary pest, so we kind of have an idea of when and where the potato originated, but it's a lot harder to study the potato genetics because they're so diverse, but the potato weevil is so restricted to its environment at high altitudes, like it'll die if it goes too low. Its entire reproductive life cycle happens within the potato, so it could only spread if humans were moving the potatoes around, and so we're able to see a lot of cool things by seeing human impact on insects and kind of reverse constructing it. And that highlights also, I think, the value of insect collections to help us track these sounds. Absolutely, collections are essential. Yeah, sure. The largest... Oh, I'm sorry. Yeah, go. Many instances of also unintended use, unintended also consequences of introduction of insects or introduction of organisms, and Australia had experienced it quite a bit. Tough negative impacts of introduction as well in some other area, but there are many also positive things also. Like a few years ago, a tomato paste called two types, absolutely invaded Africa from South America through Spain, but it came without its natural enemy. Yes. So we had to introduce the natural enemy that evolved together with a paste from Peru, from its original place. And through a range of quarantine procedure sets in different countries, we multiplied the natural enemy, we released determined countries in Africa and it's well-established and it is doing what it is intended to do. So there are few also positive examples of those types of procedures. I think we have time for one more question, Margaret. Okay, so the largest created structure in the world is not made by humans, but instead a single colony of termites. A termite colony the size of Great Britain was found not too long ago in Brazil. What can we learn from these types of discoveries? Well, some of these termite mounds are incredibly old. You know, they've done some carbon dating on some of the termite mounds from Massachusetts in Africa and they're thousands of years old. And the termite mounds that we're finding in Brazil, they show an example of persistence, but they also are warning. So, you know, as we go back and sample the same termite mounds, we do a lot of our work actually on the border of Biana and Brazil. I was just there and I saw many of them had caught fire because of an unusually dry season and the effects of climate change. So, when we see these large mounds, they tell us, it's kind of like having a time machine. It kind of tells us the thing about thousands of years of termite social behavior kind of taking place within these mounds, but they also can maybe help us kind of take the temperature of what's happening in the environment. If they're still there, their persistence actually is a message. And when we lose them, when we lose these large structures, that actually should be a really harsh warning. I mean, it makes me think of the rather cool concept of niche construction in evolutionary biology, where we think of organisms as being adapted to their ecological environment. We think of bees being adapted to pollinators and so on. But a lot of the time, organisms are adapted to an environment that they have themselves engineered to a huge degree. And the termites are a really lovely example of that where you think of what's the evolutionary environment in which termites are evolved? Well, it's been millions and millions of years of this environment they themselves have created and passed down through the generations as a kind of ecological inheritance in the way that we might pass down our own houses. So it starts to challenge the way we think about what the environment is and about what inheritance is. Gets us thinking about it in a more expansive way. Gets us realizing that inheritance is not just about genes, but about things like termite nests, about the totality of what you leave to the next generation. They're true and I suppose, I mean it really kind of is a behavior that like the behavior that they have within those mounds, that's generations long behavior, that's culture I would say. They tend to have crypts inside of their mounds where they take their dad. They tend to have nurseries where they take injured individuals and then they decide whether or not they need to go to the crypt because they're on the way out or that they can be saved. The compartmentalization inside of these structures is so sophisticated. Their social behavior is so sophisticated how we don't look to them as an example of culture I don't know. Ann, I wonder if given that you were the speaker at our first session, I could spin the question a little bit and ask you as a science communicator who talks to children and talks to, you know, groups like this one and talks to university students, how would you spin the story of the gigantic, great Britain sized termite mound? How might you employ that in the kind of work that you want to do to encourage us to love insects? I think I would focus on the fact that tiny creatures that we usually ignore in our daily life can build something as enormous as that. I mean, for me, it's the respect already there. And I think maybe I would use it as an introduction, for instance, to talk more about termites like all the amazing adaptations they have and the fact that we can learn or be inspired from them. I think it's a good example of, I actually wrote a blog about those huge constructions on my science blog when the paper came. So I think it's these things that make people go, wow, can insects do this? I mean, it's huge and I think it's aged, like it's like from before the Egyptian pyramids. So it's that specific construction is, yeah, like you said, super old too. So I think, yeah, using those as sort of a way to get attention from people. I think that would be how I would use it and then spin on with some more knowledge, sort of try to tease that in. Anne, would you call it a form of culture? I think that's quite an interesting question. Do we see not just genetically programmed behavior, but cultures as well? That's very interesting. I haven't thought of it that way, but it's a super interesting way of thinking about it. Yes. I am ready to work with all of you on the paper about culture. Say that again, Julie. I say, I'm ready to work with everyone here on the paper about termite culture. Okay. Great. I'd love to read that. Well, astonishingly, we are going to be able to stop on time. Thanks so much to Anna for having a talk that was arriving from time and lovely. And really, thank you everybody. Such a great invitation to us to commence our love of insects. We have a few, I have a few quick announcements. There are breakout sessions starting at 12.45 today. You can find the whole list of those both in your program and also online. They are in rooms scattered around the campus. If you can't find a room, please ask someone, anyone with a name tag, but probably anyone that looks like a student will be able to help you. There are other activities in the program on page 22 that you can use your time to participate in. Food choices and locations can be found on page 23. We are working very hard to make this a zero waste event. There are very carefully labeled receptacles. Please work to put your trash, your recycling and your composting into the appropriate container. We are a tobacco-free compost. We are a tobacco-free campus. Smoking is not allowed indoors or outdoors anywhere on the campus. For those of you online, we have a whole bunch of special things curated just for you. We will reconvene at 1.45 when the Gustavus Symphony Orchestra will join us and we will have a lecture by Dr. Shannon Lloyd. The lecture begins at two. Thank you.