The pine sawyer beetle is well-known to Montanans from forested regions. Photo by Derek Sikes.

Entomology forever

A poisonous snake once bit Ivie in Russia. Ivie had a nasty fall in Malaysia. Injuries are so common that Donna routinely asks him for the latest report when he returns home, Ivie said. He has come to believe that past injuries will continue to bother him as he grows older.

But he has no plans to retire.

"You really don't know what you're doing in this field until you're 60," he explained.

Entomology is a field in which senior scientists are sought out and revered, even though he's not exactly comfortable with the thought of joining their ranks, Ivie said. Entomologists open their homes to entomologists they've never seen before. They can meet in one of the world's most remote places and feel like old friends.

"It's a dispersed community that's very tight," he said.

For that reason — and because he continues to "find new things that are amazing, that nobody has seen before" — he plans to keep traveling and continue seeking beetles, Ivie said. So far, Ivie said the research teams he has joined have found thousands of new species of beetles over the years. Wagner said the findings from Statia and Saba may end up in a virtual natural history museum. If Conservation International makes it happen, visitors won't go to a building, but they'll go to a Web site where they can see and examine specimens from around the world. As on Wikipedia, they'll be able to make comments and corrections to the site.

That will be an amazing accomplishment, but Ivie's longest legacy will be the actual specimens he has collected, Wagner said.

"I would hope Mike's specimens will be available to posterity for centuries," Wagner said. "They will be used almost like fossils."

Return to regular view	Text-only	Published: 11/24/2008