Back to school

It's the start of another academic year - one of many such starts for an old fart like me. I still get excited by this, though, so I guess that's a sign that I chose the right career. I'm teaching a course on insects, the first since I left graduate school and the University of Illinois many years ago. Technology got in the way, but that was a good prompt to go outside and actually look at real insects rather than images on a projection screen. Not to say that such images can't be useful - after all, I'm unlikely to find a Ricinulei around Eureka! Insects have been (and continue to be) vital to the advancement of our biological understanding. Our friend, Charles Darwin (an inveterate beetle collector), noted that social insects posed a real problem for natural selection - how can castes evolve and be maintained when most castes can't reproduce. Charlie figured it out that - kin selection, first mentioned in On the Origin of Species ... in 1859. Look it up! Gotta run - I'll try and post more.