Stephen Marshall – The Biodiversity of Insects

As a taxonomist, Stephen Marshall studies biodiversity and insect species, and helps with the naming, describing and classifying of newly discovered six-legged creatures. And there are lots of new specifies to find and classify; he himself has discovered hundreds of species, several new genera and two new subfamilies over the decades – just a fraction of the estimated one to two million species of insects that live on our planet.

Fun fact: the vast proportion of the weight of the world is accounted for by insects. “It’s easy to forget that human beings form a tiny two-legged minority in an overwhelmingly six-legged world,” this University of Guelph professor famously wrote in his seminal book, Insects: Their Natural History and Diversity. After the 2006 edition of book was published, the University of Guelph professor came to ideacity to discuss the importance of identifying different insect species through his online identification guide.