A Tale of Two…Glasses?

Abstract

It was the best of wines, it was the worst of wines … port wine, that is. But I’m getting way, way ahead of myself. So let me start again….

I consider myself a microlepidopterist—not a tiny person who studies moths, but a normal-sized person who studies tiny moths. Although we may boast of a long legacy of champions—Linnaeus was actually the first person to describe a microlepidopteran—I really do not think of us as having many of your standard time-honored traditions … but of course, I could be wrong (duh!). Like most scientists, we enjoy bashing, or at least augmenting, modifying, or fine-tuning the hypotheses, concepts, and methods of those who came before us—nothing is sacred. Our science, like all science, moves forward by questioning the findings of our predecessors, mentors, and peers. Furthermore, in the constant barrage of technological advances, there are fewer and fewer systematic and traditional methods that we have in common with those who laid the foundations of our science. For example, Edward Meyrick (1854–1938), the “godfather” of microlepidoptera who described over 14,000 species of little moths, relied exclusively on superficial characters of the wings and body. His descriptions of new species were concise and accurate but woefully incomplete by today’s standards. Nonetheless, as a teacher of “the classics,” each and every one of the Latin names (all species must have a scientific or Latin name) proposed by Meyrick is exceptional in its Latin derivation and grammatical structure. The closest some of us cretins come to Latin today is pig-Latin. The study of Latin? Now, there’s a long lost tradition.