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Gladiator
| Date: |
13 October 2002 12:00 |
| Producer: |
Linda De Jager
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| Show: | Carte Blanche |
The Brandberg - the highest mountain in Namibia - recently became the focus of a group of intrepid scientists in search of an elusive insect, known as the Gladiator.
They will go where few have gone before to its rocky outcrops.
They searched day and night. Somewhere, lurking out there for millions of years, is a spiny creature that you can easily confuse with a cricket or praying mantis.
The aim was to find a living specimen - believed to represent a new order, previously known only from fossils and two somewhat desiccated museum specimens.
The news of this find rocked the scientific world. The last new order to be described was the ice-crawlers in1914.
At this point, Mantaphasmatodea, as Gladiator is known in the world of science, seemed like a unique find - but nature was to surprise them once more.
From a mountain in Namibia to the Western Cape - the Gladiator story took a surprise turn when Dr Mike Picker of the University of Cape Town saw pictures of the insect published in a scientific journal.
'I recognised the insects and was very familiar with them, doing research in Namaqualand having come across them for many years, and suddenly here they were and people had put them into their correct perspective,' he says.
Mike had encountered these insects previously, but had thought that they were some weird type of cricket or another species.
While he was doing research for a field guide on insects in South Africa, he encountered them countless times in the succulent Karoo and also in the Fynbos area of the Western Cape.
He was fascinated, but had no idea that he was a hand's length away from an entomologist's dream: the discovery of a new order.
After seeing the published pictures of the newly described order in April this year, he searched through the insect collections of all the South African museums, finding 29 specimens, some having been collected as long ago as 1890.
Les: 'But Mike, why is it a major find?'
'The find is not is not only exciting because they are a new species, but because they represent a new order and what I mean by that is a whole new evolutionary experiment - now, just to put that in perspective, levels have different orders. The bats are in one order, whales are another order and even humans and their relatives comprise yet another order. So it's a huge evolutionary experiment. Look, they are small - they are 2cm long - but they are fierce. They've got swollen legs covered with very, very sharp spines and they can lash out at insects, grab and grabble them - they've got little suction pads underneath. And their normal way of feeding is to stalk - they almost sneak up on their prey and then they just lash out. They grab the insects, they've got razor-sharp mandibles and maxillae -these are their teeth,' says Mike.
Even more fascinating is their mating behaviour. The male is much smaller than the female, and he literally has to get the jump on her.
'And the mating is interesting in that it's prolonged, and by prolonged I mean up to five days of uninterrupted mating, during which time the male not only transfers sperm, but he also transfers nutrients to the female, and staying mated for so long serves the extra function of warding other males. He wants to make sure of his paternity. By the time he's forced off he's pretty feeble and weak, and in the laboratory, the females generally eat the males after copulation, and the male doesn't resist,' says Mike.
In June this year, Mike and a team of specialists collected a number of specimens varying in colour, and probably representing at least four species within the order.
However, the story of Gladiator is millions of years old.
The key to this important scientific discovery was two insects embedded in what is known as Baltic Amber.
'Baltic Amber is a very unusual type of fossilisation where ancient insects crawled onto oozing gum coming out of pine forests, and became trapped in the gum and subsequently hardened and today are perfectly preserved in their original detail. These fossils, which contain insects of 45-million years ago - were fairly common in temperate forests which covered Europe some time ago,' says Mike.
Les: 'What sort of state are these insects in when you discover them?'
'The insects are perfectly preserved because unlike most fossilisation methods, the amber excludes oxygen and there's no decay and it's just as easy to examine details in their fossils as it its when looking at living specimens,' says Mike.
It seems as if entomologists worldwide are now in the throes of Gladiator fever.
'Scientists are requesting bits and pieces from all parts of the globe - some want to study their heart, some want to study their eggshells, and people are very excited and we've formed a large international team with specialists from different countries all taking little bits and pieces of these animals, and examining pieces of them under microscopes,' says Mike.
The fiery Gladiator is bound to win many hearts and bring science in South Africa under the spotlight.
IMPORTANT DISCLAIMER:While every attempt has been made to ensure this transcript or summary is accurate, Carte Blanche or its agents cannot be held liable for any claims arising out of inaccuracies caused by human error or electronic fault. This transcript was typed from a transcription recording unit and not from an original script, so due to the possibility of mishearing and the difficulty, in some cases, of identifying individual speakers, errors cannot be ruled out.
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