Prof. Dr. John C. Morse talking with the Prof. and Head, Dr. V. Sobha (right) and other faculty members of the Department of Environmental Sciences, University of Kerala.Prof. Dr. John C. Morse, Department of Entomology, Soil and Plant Sciences, Clemson University, South Carolina, U.S.A. recently visited the Department of Environmental Sciences (DES), University of Kerala. For the students, research scholars and teachers, it was an enlightening session to attend his talk on 'Aquatic Insect Research and Teaching in East Asia'.
Aquatic insects including Plecoptera, Trichoptera, Ephemeroptera, Coleoptera etc could be good indicators for environmental pollutants, Dr. John unveiled. An avid study on the distribution and life of these insects would make it easier to identify the presence and estimate the quantities of various pollutants. Chasing these aquatic insects to unveil the calamitous concentrations of pollutants is otherwise called biomonitoring.
The biomonitoring simplifies the entire study of aquatic pollution, whereas the equipment-based interventions are always laborious and complex.
The benefit of insect-based aquatic pollution study are:
1. Number of species and specimens are considerably large
2. Insects tend more to stay in one locality than fish
3. Aquatic insects live for nearly one year – an appropriate period of study
The benefit of insect-based aquatic pollution study are:
1. Number of species and specimens are considerably large
2. Insects tend more to stay in one locality than fish
3. Aquatic insects live for nearly one year – an appropriate period of study
With his pragmatic mantra of seeing pollution through the eyes of aquatic insects, Prof. Dr. John Morse has already toured Russia and East Asian countries including China, Taiwan, Mongolia, Korea and Thailand. And his session at DES has surely led the audience along the shores of entomological learning that is already as immense as the sea.
- Akhila S. Nair after attending the session at DES.
Photos: Kannan and Dipu Sukumaran
1 comment:
Dear Akhila S. Nair and K.P. Sivakumar,
Thank you for your kind review of my presentation!
I regret that I have no experience blogging and was unable to complete the
required steps to respond on your blog site.
I was delighted to learn that several young scholars are interested in
this topic and some of the participants in our workshop have now decided
to pursue careers as aquatic insect taxonomists and freshwater biologists.
They will help India design and implement a system for biomonitoring in
your country that is comparable to such systems in many countries of the
world. Several other countries in Asia are moving rapidly to implement
this technology because it is cheaper and more effective than chemical
monitoring. Others who may be interested in this new discipline for India
should visit the website for the newly launched Indian Benthological
Society.
John Morse
jmorse@clemson.edu
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