Society meeting highlights risks of ignoring science

We ignore science, including the study of insects, at our own peril.  This was an underlying message in session after session of the 2019 Annual Conference of the Entomological Society of America.

This year's ESA conference, just a few minutes' walk from the iconic St. Louis Arch, was my first business visit to the the city where I spent most of my growing up years. Out for a jog on the first day of the meeting I remembered as a kid watching workers fit last shiny aluminum triangle into place at the top of the Arch shortly after my family arrived. I admit I felt a little old when I realized the Arch turned 55 this year.

Glorious flies

As glorious as technology can appear to the human eye, I was quickly reminded that insects are just as cool, and have been around a lot longer than any arch.  The plenary session speaker was Janet McAlister, British author of the book The Secret Life of Flies.  With a generous dash of humor, McAlister breezed through story after story of amazing flies.  One in ten living species on the planet is a fly, she said, with 17 million individual flies for every living human. Flies are also beautiful when you get close enough.

We can thank the fruit fly, Drosophila melanogaster, a pest of kitchens and hospitals around the country, for its contributions to our modern understanding of genetics and the genes associated with diseases like Alzheimer's and Parkinson's.

Flies are important pollinators too. A type of biting midge is also the sole pollinator of Theobroma cacao, our plant source for chocolate. No flies?  No more chocolate.

And as McAlister pointed out, at times even crime fighters depend on flies.  The first murder solved with the assistance of insects was the strange case of  Dr. Buck Ruxton in England in 1935. Ruxton was convicted of murdering his wife and servant after the fly maggots found in his victims' decaying bodies were used to estimate the approximate time of the murder.  And as any fan of television's CSI shows will tell you, flies are used for the same purpose today. For some fantastic images of flies, check out Gil Wizen's photography page (featured in many of McAlister's slides).

The coming Insect Apocalypse?

It's not too often that I see reference made to the Bible in a scientific paper, much less a meeting; but this year's buzz-phrase for many attendees was "insect apocalypse."  One of the better attended symposia was devoted to Insect Decline in the Anthropocene (the Anthropocene is a scientific term for the man-dominated biological/geological era we are in today).  While I missed several talks in this session while darting between papers, the central message was clear.  Something is happening to insect populations around the world, and it's not good.

Among concerns of attendees are declines in many kinds of
wild bees, sometimes referred to as a "Beepocalypse"

Hans deKroon, from Radboud University in the Netherlands reported on the results of a 27 year study of insect densities in 63 German nature preserves.  Using the same sampling method and places for sampling in relatively unchanged parklands between 1989 and 2016, the researchers documented a 76% decline in the total weight of insects (biomass) caught in traps over this time.  The surprising thing was that declines were seen across all sites with all kinds of insects--not just a few.  The authors attribute some of the decline to land fragmentation (sites were often close to agricultural land), but also possibly pesticides and climate change.

David Wagner, University of Connecticut, reported a similar 70% decline in moths of pristine New England forests.  The decline, he said, averages 1-2% per year and is across a large region.  The only explanation is some kind of broad external cause(s). Beyond increasing global temperatures, possible causes for loss of moths and butterflies include nitrification, light pollution, exotic insects, and car strikes.

So what are the consequences of such large declines in insect biomass?  I mean shouldn't we be rejoicing in fewer insects if this means fewer pests?  Absolutely not. In addition to entomologists, all sorts of biologists and nature lovers should be concerned by these numbers. Insects are keystone (ecologically very important) species in many environments.  They help decompose dead organic matter, keep potentially invasive plants under control, and feed fish and birds and many, many other types of wildlife. Indeed, one especially depressing study in the Science journal this year reports a 29% decline in bird numbers in the U.S. since 1970 (click here to see the paper in full). While the reasons for bird decline are complex, losing an important food source is not good for birds or bird lovers.

Tim Showalter, Louisiana State University, cautioned attendees to take care in drawing hasty conclusions, and in careless interpretation of apocalyptic data.  In a cautionary paper, he noted that a 2018 paper on supposed food chain collapse and a 60% decline in insect populations due to climate change in a Puerto Rican rain-forest garnered attention in the press, but was ultimately based on faulty data.  A change in positioning of temperature stations, misinterpretation of different survey databases, and impacts of multiple hurricanes led the authors to erroneous conclusions.  The food chain is NOT collapsing in Luquillo, Puerto Rico, he said. A rebuttal to the paper is now posted on the journal website.

Showalter's paper illustrates the imperfection, yet self-correcting nature of science.  It also illustrates how easy it can be for interpreters of science to cherry-pick data to reinforce a given point of view. We all need to be critical readers of science; however, this doesn't mean we can't trust scientists.  Certainly the majority view of entomologists is that something alarming is happening to many kinds of insects in many locations around the world. We should not ignore this issue or the scientists raising fair warning.

Learning from History

Rocky Mountain locust, Melanoplus
spretus, ca. 1870s, Minnesota. 

As I get older, history gets more interesting.  The ESA is fortunate to have among its membership a significant number of scientists with an interest in the historical roots of entomology. For example, I learned from Jeffrey Lockwood, University of Wyoming, that the first recorded time our government called on science to solve a political problem involved entomology. Between 1874 and 1877 the Rocky Mountain locust caused staggering crop damage in Kansas, Nebraska, Minnesota and Missouri. While inventors and hucksters of the day promoted a variety of solutions for locusts, little was really known about the biology and life cycles of these insects. For example, many farmers believed that locusts were so diabolically destructive because they were led by kings and queens (not true).

In 1876 a new governmental group known as the Entomological Commission was authorized by Congress to study the problem. The team quickly recognized that the key to the locust's destruction lay in identifying its true identity, its breeding grounds and the conditions that led to outbreaks (sounds a lot like an IPM program).  Also a collection of natural enemies was identified. While this information would have ultimately been useful in developing long-term control measures, Rocky Mountain locust swarms were already in decline by 1877--something for which the entomologists were happy to take credit. It turns out that by the 1880s the swarms all but ceased, likely because of the loss of the great buffalo herds which, by reducing food in the permanent breeding range, and pulverizing the soil with their hooves, would trigger the buildup of migratory locust swarms.

Entomologists were pragmatists in the locust wars, arguing against those who ascribed the swarms as evidence of God's judgement due to a general lack of morality and repentance.  Rather than promoting a day of prayer, however, entomologists insisted that farmers would be better served by looking to science to discover the causes and solutions to the plagues.  Today the Rocky Mountain locust is extinct, following the path of all organisms that cannot adapt to a changing environment.

Insects and Health

Like it or not insects are important factors in human health. Insects and indoor health was the theme of one session I attended.  Respected researcher Felicia Rabito, Tulane University, pointed out that asthma remains relatively poorly understood, despite its public health significance. One in 12 children in the U.S. suffer from asthma, a chronic inflammatory disease of the airways. In her studies 73% of homes have elevated levels of one or more environmental triggers of asthma (e.g., smoke, pet dander, particulate air pollution, and pest derived allergens).  Cockroach allergens remain one of the strongest promoters and triggers, and appear to cause four times the hospitalization rate of other allergens. Her research with a relatively small sample size showed that even a single IPM intervention (bait only) could have significant positive health outcomes for kids living in treated homes. Their team plans to redo the study with a larger (300 household) sample size.

A co-researcher with Rabito, and one of the most original and thought-provoking urban entomologists today, Coby Schal, North Carolina State University, gave an interesting talk on reducing cockroach allergens simply through cockroaches baiting.  He argued that the comprehensive IPM approach, such as advocated by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease, starting with improving sanitation, use of non-chemical tactics, biological control and (perhaps) chemical control may be too slow and expensive in most cockroach infested homes (think public housing).  His data suggests that IPM and health specialists should lead with cockroach baiting because it is the fastest and least expensive way to reduce indoor allergens. It remains alarming to me the number of pest control companies that still rely primarily on sprays to control German cockroaches, when baits have time and again been shown more effective in controlling cockroaches and improving public health.

Bed bugs remain a topic of interest in these meetings, though not to the level of 5-10 years ago.  Jonathan Sheele gave two papers on bed bugs from a doctor's perspective. In the Ohio Emergency Room where he previously worked, he noted that when bed bugs were found on a patient, that room would be out of use for cleaning and pest control an average of 20 hours. This would happen every 2-3 days on average. His hospital spent $30,000 annually on IPM costs associated with infested patients. Patients with bed bugs were more likely to suffer anemia, Staphylococcus infection, and use an inhaler than patients without bed bugs. In a separate paper, Sheele reflected on the potential for a future pill that people could take to kill bed bugs. In lab studies, both spinosad and fluralaner (Bravecta®) provided excellent control of bed bugs; however neither drug is yet approved for use on humans.  Abamectin is another antiparasitic agent that does have human approval, however tests on its effectiveness in humans against bed bugs have not been conducted. Such an innovation could be a big boon, especially for low income families suffering from bed bugs.

Stephane Perron, National Institute of Public Health in Quebec, Canada, looked at bed bugs in public health and reported that bed bug infestations often result in prolonged stress for patients. Some of the mental health impacts of bed bugs include fear, sense of lack of control, physical discomfort, sleep deprivation, financial stress, property loss, stress over preparing a home for treatment, conflicts with neighbors, the stigma associated with bed bugs, fear of insecticides, and exacerbation of prior mental health issues.  On the flip side, a recent study she conducted showed that anxiety and depression could decline when bed bugs were successfully controlled--a real benefit pest management companies can take pride in.

Zach DeVries, University of Kentucky, noted that the bed bug's status as only "a nuisance" is coming to an end. Again, public health professionals, decision makers and politicians need to take cockroaches, bed bugs, mosquitoes and other urban pests seriously.

Odds and Ends

Again I felt a little old during this meeting when I realized how different students are today. Grad students at the meeting are more diverse and more attuned to social media than ever before. As such they represent many of your younger pest control customers.

Striving to keep up, I attended a session on using social media.  I found myself in a group fellow laggards who did not understand some of the basics of the Twitter platform.  While I do use Twitter (@mikemerchant), I realized I still didn't understand some of the basics of the app and Twitter platform.  I learned how to better use hashtags, and that I need to follow more people if I want to expand my personal Twitterverse (I have a difficult-enough time with the regular Universe) #oldfashioned, #luddite, #booklover.  I reflected that if we fail to learn from these young professionals we risk ending up like the Rocky Mountain locust.

Joe DeMark, Corteva AgriScience, gave a paper on a new termiticide caulk formulation in the works. The caulk provides another above-ground option for treating termite tubes.  It could, I envision, replace the somewhat clunky (though effective) AG bait stations.  Caulk has an advantage of being flexible enough to inject into infested trees, or placed directly on an exposed termite foraging tube.  It has the same active ingredient as Sentricon, noviflumuron and is applied with a regular caulk gun.  In studies conducted in New Orleans against Formosan termites, tree infestations were consistently eliminated in about 2.5 months.  Control of termites in homes was accomplished in 30-90 days.  If it should ever become a product, DeMark does not expect it to be commercially available until after 2020.

The Asian longhorn tick is now present in 11 states since its discovery in 2017.  A first human bite was recorded this year, which was significant because of its ability in other countries to carry disease to both livestock and humans.  In a talk by Ryan Smith, Iowa State University, I learned that a 2019 study showed that the tick could pick up Lyme disease from an infected mouse (bad). But the same study showed it could not maintain the disease through molting. This is good news, because it means this tick is unlikely to transmit Lyme disease in the wild.  Nevertheless, there are other diseases of concern and the increasing number of exotic pests being introduced into the U.S. continues to threaten both ecological and human health

Lastly, the ACE Associate Certified Entomologist program hosted by the ESA continues to grow. As of this writing there are 1251 active ACEs.  ESA estimates that there will be 1,272 ACEs by the end of year (lots of new applicants currently), representing 13.5% growth since December last year. The ACE program is unique in that it is the only individual-oriented certification program. It can provide potential customers with assurance that your company has qualified staff, and allows you to attend meetings like the St. Louis conference at discounted rates.

If you think you're interested in becoming an ACE, check out the ESA Certification Corporation website.  And consider attending one of the upcoming Texas prep classes in Dallas or in College Station.  The class is an excellent way to either begin studying, or as a last-minute confidence builder before taking the test.

Each of us has a unique role to play in service to our society. But we only do our jobs well when we commit ourselves to lifelong learning. As is clear from these meetings, knowledge is expanding rapidly.  I hope each of you keep following the science behind the pest control profession (as you already are by reading to the end of this post) and continue to avoid the perils of unfounded opinion.

Science is the father of knowledge, but opinion breeds ignorance. Hippocrates

Moving Beyond Mallis: Young Entomologists at NCUE

The biannual National Conference on Urban Entomology (NCUE) is always a treat.  It’s a relatively small conference with a personal feel. Many attendees know each other personally, and new students get to learn more about urban entomology outside their labs and classrooms. This year’s meeting in Raleigh, NC attracted about 200 students, university faculty and industry urban entomologists, including a score of researchers from the joint invasive pest ant conference.

When I attend NCUE I see folks whose lives and careers I’ve followed for many years, as well as new faces who are the future of our industry.  I hear controversy in discussion sessions as researchers politely prod speakers to think more deeply about their research results (entomologists are almost always polite); and sometimes I hear talks that will change the way I view structural pest control. While there were no real revelations at this meeting, many of the talks I heard this year fell into the category of “baby steps” toward better pest control and deeper understanding of the biology of structural pests.

Every NCUE meeting has a Distinguished Achievement Award recipient. This year’s honor went to Brian Forschler, a respected termite researcher from the University of Georgia. It was his job to open the meeting with a tribute to Arnold Mallis, who many of you know by his “ten-pound” Handbook of Pest Control. 

In the 1940s and 50s Arnold Mallis was a
rising star in the field of urban entomology.

Forschler noted that Mallis filled a desperate need at the time for science-based information on household insect pests. Though he had little to say about IPM (the concept hadn’t been formally proposed), in his books he summarized critical biological information upon which IPM programs could later be built. Mallis taught us that urban entomology is built upon a firm foundation of education and engagement with its stakeholders. Forschler urged each attendee, especially each student, to consider new ways to engage outsiders with urban entomology, while being the same consummate entomologist, naturalist and observer of insects as Arnold Mallis.

After Forschler’s session, the meeting began with papers from student award winners.  When I listen to students I always keep in mind that today’s students are tomorrow’s experts.  In just a few years these will be the folks making the rounds at CEU meetings for NPMA and other professional gatherings, so it pays to listen and make note of the new faces.

Emily Vernon, Bachelor of Science Student Award winner came from North Carolina State University where she studies Blattabacterium, a genus of symbiotic bacteria that live within special bacteria-hosting cells of cockroaches. These bacteria, she proposed, are essential to the German cockroach’s ability to survive in nitrogen-poor environments. In her research with 16S ribosomal RNA primers she detected high levels of variability in Blattabacterium in field populations of cockroaches, leading her to pose the question: “if we can manipulate Blattabacterium in the cockroach, might we be able to control cockroaches in the field?” I don’t know the answer, but I do know that when I was her age my most profound questions dealt with where to go for pizza on Friday night. Wow!

Master’s Student Award winner, Danielle Hoefele, Simon Fraser University, tackled a whole new structural pest, the European fire ant, Myrmica rubra. Think of it as a fire ant for the north.  The European fire ant is spreading into British Columbia and Washington State, as well as New England and eastern Canada.  It’s an aggressive ant with a sting that itches up to 10 days.  Danielle looked for different food sources that might work well in a fire ant bait. She found that baits combining carbohydrates and proteins were most attractive. Ultimately, she hopes to design a custom bait to provide a much-needed control option for this pest.

The herb thyme is a natural source for the monoterpene oil,
thymol, which has promise as a natural insecticide against
bed bugs. Relatively few plant oils have been investigated for
use in urban entomology. 

Sudip Gaire from Purdue University was the Ph.D. Student Award winner for his studies on the effects of plant essential oils against bed bugs. Sudip is pursuing more effective, safer, natural insecticides for bed bugs.  By looking at plant essential oils that have not previously been tested, he hopes to discover better options for controlling insecticide-resistant bed bugs.  He found carvacol, thymol, and citronellic acid to have to be the most toxic plant oils, none of which is currently in use against bed bugs. It may be years before these products are successfully brought to market, but Sudip is starting the process, and he reminded me that the field of essential oils for pest control is ripe for mining.

In another student paper, Sanjay Basnet from the University of Nebraska, is looking at ways to turn the bed bug’s own genetic material against itself. Interference RNA, or RNAi, are small RNA strings found naturally in the cell that help block expression of target genes. A few years back, someone got the bright idea that if we could find the right RNAi strings we might be able to use them as insecticides to turn off genes that are critical for an insect’s survival or reproduction. Sanjay thinks he may have found such an RNAi strand—one that can reduce egg production in bed bugs.  When injected into bed bugs this natural and biodegradable molecule reduced average daily egg production from 6/day to 0/day at 3 and 4 weeks after treatment. Much more work is needed to bring this kind of technology to your company; but its always encouraging to hear about any progress in this area.

One of today's rising stars of urban entomology is Zach DeVries, PhD student at North Carolina State under major professor Coby Schal.  DeVries is looking at a previously ignored component of bed bug aggregation pheromone called histamine.  You’ve probably heard of histamine. It’s an important chemical that our bodies produce to regulate our local immune response. On the positive side, histamine allows capillaries to become more permeable to our white blood cells so they can engage pathogens during an infection.  On the downside, it’s the chemical that causes inflammation and itching after an insect bite or exposure to an allergen. That’s why you may take an antihistamine drug for a runny nose or itchy eyes. Histamine also affects numerous organs, causes increases in heartrate, and difficulty breathing.

DeVries and colleagues inspected house dust from homes with and without bed bugs. They found up to 25X higher levels of histamine in bed bug-infested homes. They also found that histamine persisted for 3-6 months after an infestation had been eliminated. Whether these relatively low levels of histamine associated with bed bugs will have chronic effects on human health is unknown. But if significant, DeVries’ team’s discovery could be as important to pest control as the discovery of the link between German cockroaches and asthma in the 1990s.

DeVries also gave a second, more controversial, paper on progress towards developing a liquid bait for bed bugs. He suggests that liquid baits might offer an alternative insecticide-delivery method that could bypass at least one of the resistance strategies used by bed bugs (such as thickened, pesticide resistant cuticles).  So far, De Vries has identified good active ingredients (such as fipronil, neonicotinoids, and DMSO) for such a bait.  The feeding attractant for bed bugs is more of a challenge, however. Bed bugs eat blood of course, which is not likely to be stable in a bait formulation. And who wants blood-filled bait stations around their home?  He found that simple salt water, with or without the natural cellular compound adenosine triphosphate (ATP), made an attractive feeding stimulant for bed bugs.  The challenge, he argues, is to come up with a way to deliver this tasty insecticide to hungry bed bugs.  

But some listeners gently challenged DeVries to demonstrate how baiting might be more effective than a good trap, say.  The reason that most cockroach, termite and ant baits are so effective, is that they don’t just kill the individuals that come to the bait. They are effective because they kill the feeders and their companions. This happens when other cockroaches eat the feces or dead bodies of bait-fed cockroaches, or when ants and termites share their toxic meals with nestmates. At this point it’s hard to see how you might get secondary kill with bed bugs. Time will tell whether NCSU researchers will demonstrate the practicality of blood-mimicking bait stations; but it’s a thought provoking idea, and I’m glad someone is exploring it.

Whew. That was just some of what I learned from students at NCUE last month.  In my next installment, I’ll cover some of the highlights from veteran urban entomologists in Raleigh. 

Reading your first scientific review paper

Feeling scholarly? Today might be the day to kick off your shoes, put up your feet, grab a favorite beverage and read a scholarly review paper.

The Journal of Integrated Pest Management is a relatively new, open access (meaning free!) publication put out by Oxford Press and the Entomological Society of America.  Its purpose is to provide a place for researchers to publish reviews of the literature concerning significant pests.

Most of the papers appearing in the JIPM summarize current knowledge about the control of an agricultural or horticultural insect, weed or disease pathogen.  But this month a paper of interest to pest management professionals was published on brown recluse spiders.

Rick Vetter and Stoy Hedges, both long-time friends of the pest control industry, have teamed up to write a paper on current practical knowledge about the biology, importance and control of Loxosceles reclusa, better known as the brown recluse. Although both authors are well-published, Hedges admits the paper marks an especially sweet accomplishment for him, as his first paper in a refereed scientific journal.

What's a refereed article?

If you're a PMP and never read a scientific journal paper before, this could be a good one to start with.  But first, just what is a "refereed" journal article? If you've ever heard the old line, "publish or perish" as applied to college professors, the term publish generally refers to refereed journal articles or scholarly books. The "perish" in the saying is almost literal and refers to holding onto or losing your job as a professor. To avoid perishing professionally, it is almost universally true that professors must write refereed articles.

A refereed article is first and foremost a scholarly paper, written by someone who has become learned through study and/or research. Scholarly papers are not meant to entertain, but to precisely explore, inform or enlighten a reader on a topic.  Scholarly papers don't have to be dull or difficult to read (though many are), but they do have to be based on data, sound observation or logic. To ensure this is the case, all must go through a rigorous process of peer review and critique by fellow, equally qualified scientists or scholars.

To publish, Vetter and Hedges first wrote their paper and submitted it to the editor of the JIPM.  The editor then read the paper, made sure it was readable, whether the authors followed journal instructions, and whether it was appropriate for the journal. Once it passed the editor's initial review, willing reviewers with knowledge of spiders or urban pest control were identified and the paper was sent out for review.  Three (usually) reviewers read and commented on the paper, offered suggestions and told the editor whether they thought the paper was OK, whether it needed revision, or whether it was so bad it shouldn't be published. Only after it passed the reviewers' and editor's approval, was the paper approved for publication. Many, if not most, publications get rejected by reviewers at least once. If you look closely at these papers you can almost see the blood, sweat and tears... sometimes from both authors and reviewers.

By the way, reviewers are volunteers. If you are a professor or scholar who has previously published you might be asked to review a paper in your published field. This in itself is considered a scholarly activity and professors are graded by their institutions, partly, on how many papers they have reviewed in a given year. Reviewing a paper is a lot of work, but science could not advance without good reviewers.

The abstract

Most scientific publications have abstracts, usually at the beginning of the paper.  This is one of the most useful parts of a scientific paper. The abstract should summarize the reason for, and the key findings of, the paper.  Unlike a book description on the dust cover of a novel, the abstract should give away the ending. It should be short, but thorough enough to tell the reader what the paper is about, and its conclusions.  In a given year I read relatively few papers from start to finish, but I read a lot of abstracts. They are great time savers.

Vetter and Hedges' paper is a particular type of scholarly article called a literature review. Rather than writing about original research they conducted, they have summarized others' research and put that information into context. As the authors say in the abstract, "...we review biology and life history of the brown recluse spider as it relates to pest management as well as control measures as they pertain to an IPM strategy..." The best literature reviews are written by scholars who know their subject matter well enough to explain not just what another researcher published, but why it's important.  Literature reviews are one of the most important types of publications for new readers on a topic.

Citations

A literature review is typically peppered with citations--abbreviated references to refereed papers or books. You'll see lots in this paper. Citations generally include the first author, or two co-authors names, and the year of publication. For example, (Thoms and Scheffrahn 1994) refers to a paper by two researchers, Ellen Thoms and Rudi Scheffran, published in 1994 on the control of pests using Vikane gas.  The full reference citation is found in the section in the back of the paper, usually in the section labeled as References Cited. When the article has more than two authors it will be referred to by the primary author's name followed by et al. For example, Atkins et al. 1958 refers to a paper by J.A. Adkins and three other collaborators, Wingo, Sodeman and Flynn, published in 1958 on "necrotic arachnism" (spider bites that result in flesh-eating, slow-to-heal wounds).  Sounds like a real page turner.

Like all of us, scientists have egos; and having your name first in the list of authors is a badge of honor. Being first usually means that you led the study or done most of writing on the paper.  Surprisingly, being last in a list of authors is often considered second best. Last place is often reserved for the supervising professor (if the first author is a student), or someone responsible for securing project funding. Being stuck in the middle of a long author list is like being the "middle child"--more likely to be overlooked and forgotten.

Let's Read

That's really all you need to know to read this paper. It's more engaging (and you are less likely to fall asleep) if you use a highlighter to mark things new to you, or which might be relevant to control of these spiders. For example, several years ago I did some insecticide tests on brown recluse spiders, so I was especially interested in the review of insecticides that others found effective. I also know from talking with fumigators that spiders are notoriously hard to kill with fumigants. So I was interested to learn that Thoms and Scheffran determined that a 1.5X rate of Vikane was needed to kill brown recluse spiders. I highlighted both of these sections.

Lastly, remember that even writers of scholarly papers are ordinary people--sometimes a little geekier or nerdier than some of your football-watching buddies, but still just people who put their pants on one leg at a time. Even scholars make mistakes, overlook data, and draw bad conclusions. Even though peer review is a rigorous process, it's not perfect. To me, that makes reading science papers more interesting. It means that they should always be read critically, with an eye to your own experience and to common sense.

When you're done, take the paper and file it. I have a My Library folder on my computer. This article went into a sub-folder on spider papers.  Whatever system you use, put it somewhere you can find it later. Otherwise you will forget most of what you've learned and highlighted.

So grab a cold one and dig in. There's a lot to learn about spiders in Vetter and Hedges 2018.