“You know how kids like to pick up worms and bugs and stuff? I just never grew up,” said K. Taro Eldredge, EEB’s new Museum Insect Collection Manager. From the time he was a youngster, Eldredge was preparing for this opportunity. “I've been collecting insects since I was a kid and kept it up throughout college and post-grad,” Eldredge said. Originally from Tokyo, Japan, Taro received his B.Sc. in Entomology from Cornell before completing his Ph.D. Ecology & Evolutionary Biology at the University of Kansas.
Lured to U-M for its vibrant research collections, Eldredge is keenly interested in rove beetles or, in his words, ‘the biggest family you’ve never heard of.’ Containing over 63,000 species, Rove beetles are more diverse than all vertebrates combined. Eldredge focuses on the largest subfamily, Aleocharinae. Containing over 12,000 species, some fossils date back 200 million years. “My interests primarily lie in the groups that have astonishingly managed to repeatedly converge on weird/unusual ecologies, such as marine and symbiosis with other animals. I am particularly fond of the multitude of anatomically inexplicable societal symbionts of ants and termites.”
Out of necessity, Eldredge has also developed an interest in photography. “Because insects are so small, photography is essential for documenting their biodiversity and sharing the many wonderful forms they take.” Over the last ten years, Eldredge has taken hundreds of photographs, many of which record the unique attributes of rove beetles. “Some photos are great examples of how funky rove beetles can get when they have evolved to live with ants and termites. Specifically, Ecitocryptus mimicking an ant, and Thyreoxenus mimicking a termite.”
