Job Descriptions - Definitions - Career Fields: Entomologist
 

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Entomologist

If you like creepy-crawlies and have a deep interest in finding facts on the insects on our planet, then this is the career for you. You must be mathematically adept, able to work carefully and accurately and enjoy a laboratory or research institute environment.
Insects are the most ancient inhabitants of the continental masses. They have left fossil remains from the very ancient Palaeozoic deposits in Devonian onwards and the state of evolution that they have already reached shows that they must have branched off in the Silurian, at the latest. You need to have an interest in just why and how insects spread over the earth. Insects belong to the great phylum Arthropoda (articulated animals), because they have a body made up of segments of different kinds; the head, the thorax and the abdomen.

About one million species have been identified and an average of 6,000 to 7,000 are added each year which shows that we do not know everything that there is to know about insects! For 500 million years, insects have swarmed all over the regions of the globe. Why? And who needs them? Try explaining to a cattle farmer that flies play an important role and that mosquitos serve a vital function. Everyone knows that ants are nature's rubbish disposal units but a flea? Cockroaches, for instance, feed on decaying matter so can they be bad for the ecology even if they give us the creeps?

Greenfly are just one of the sap-sucking aphids that often cluster in their thousands on rose bushes. Blackfly on beans is another pest. In summer, aphids can reproduce without males - a process known as parthenogenesis. One lonely female could multiply into a plague of 100,000 within one month. A chemical was discovered by chemists, that did not kill desirable insects, pirimicarb, which seeps through the greenfly's skin and its molecules fit like a glove against those of the vital enzyme in aphids called acetylcholinesterase. This poison is harmful to humans, birds and animals and so scientists are looking into better ways to control plagues. You might become involved in this kind of research.

You would have to study how insects can be used in commercial and medicinal ways and what natural pesticides can be used to control them.


Career Fields


Biology and Life Sciences
Science and Technology


 

Courtesy: CareerExpo

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