Tag Archives: Alfred Russel Wallace

Overwhelmed with work this weekend, so this Week on Sunday is short.

♦ Just out earlier this week, science blogger Carl Zimmer’s TedEd talk on the jewel wasp (Ampulex compressa) and the parasitic relationship with cockroaches…

This talk is based on the research: Gal, Ram; Rosenberg, Lior Ann; Libersat, Frederic (22 November 2005). “Parasitoidan organism that lives in or on the body of a single host individual, eventually killing that host. wasp uses a venom cocktail injected into the brain to manipulate the behavior and metabolism of its cockroach prey“. Archives of Insect Biochemistry and Physiology 60 (4): 198–208. doi:10.1002/arch.20092. PMID 16304619.

♦ And also just released, this video teaser of an upcoming docu-drama on Alfred Russel Wallace, the lesser known compatriot of Charles Darwin who independently conceived the theory of evolution by means of natural selection. Wallace was a  naturalist, explorer, geographer, anthropologist and biologist, but for our purposes he was a bug-collector extraordinaire, who traveled throughout the Amazon and the East Indies in search of specimens.

There is a sort of Alfred Russel Wallace renaissance taking place now, and this year we will be celebrating his life and scientific legacy, as 2013 is the centenary of his death.. His writings can be found at Wallace Online, and his correspondence has also recently become available at Wallace Letters Online. You can stay up-to-date at the George Beccaloni’s Alfred Russel Wallace Correspondence Project‘s website, and at his Wallace 100 blog. Wallace’s collections can be seen at the Natural History Museum’s online Wallace Collection. And finally, I would be remiss if I did not mention Charles H. Smith, who was foremost in the effort to  keep the memory of Wallace alive, at The Alfred Russel Wallace Page.

So much out there to delight the lover of the history of science! Until next week…