A Tribute to Miriam Rothschild: Entomologist Extraordinaire
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A Tribute to Mirfam Rothschild: Entomologist Extraordinaire — Number17 April 23,1984 In a recent essay, I reviewed the latest some sense of Rothschild the individual, publications of 1S1 Press$) .1 Among for she is a dynamic and unconventional these is a biography of the turn-of-the- personality with a boundless range of in- century British zoologist, Walter Roth- terests. schild, entitled Dear Lord iZofhschifd: Rothschild was born into the eminent Birds, Butte&ies and History.2 The Rothschild family on August 5, 1908. book was written by Miriam Rothschdd, Her father, Charles Rothschild (Wal- a d~tinguished entomologist who is also ter’s brother), was an enthusiastic ama- Walter’s niece. She has produced a most teur zoologist, In free time snatched entertaining and informative account of from the demands of the family business, his life and scientific achievements. he managed to publish over 150 scientif- Dear Lord Rothschild has been well ic papers on fleas. He was also one of received by the scientific and lay Tring Museum’s major collectors. press. s-~ The book establishes beyond a For 27 years, Rothschild lived at Tring doubt that significant contributions to Park, Hertf ordshlre, northwest of Lon- zoological systematic, nomenclature, don. Tring Park was the site of her and microevolution were made at Tring uncle’s natural history museum. This Museum, which Walter Rothschild museum housed the largest collection of founded and administered for 50 years. animal specimens assembled by one per- Yet for all its value as science hktory, son. It contained more than two million the book is leavened with entertaining butterflies and moths, 300,000 bird insider’s anecdotes about some of the skins, 144 giant tortoises, and 200,000 most powerful people in Victorian and birds’ eggs. Given this environment and Edwardian England. And as the only her father’s influence, it’s not surprising book about a Rothschdd written by a that the young Rothschild evinced a pas- Rothschild, the work has special author- sionate attachment to insects, birds, and ity. all other animals. She began breeding Meeting Miriam Rothschild prompted ladybirds when she was only four years me to analyze, for the first time, the en- old. tomology journals indexed in Science Like most women of her day, Roth- Citation Irrdex’s (SCI” ).7 It also con- schild was educated at home. In fact, the firmed my feeling that the work of this Rothschild family did not favor formal remarkable scientist merited a thorough education for either sex. Her uncle en- review. In thk essay, I will discuss her dured only the minimum of university most important research in several areas rote learning before breaking away to of entomology. I will also try to convey conduct independent zoological re- 120 works in fields ranging from marine biology to plant/insect interactions. As a child, Rothschild studied butterflies and ladybirds, but her zoological inter- ests later crystallized around marine bi- ology. Indeed, her earliest publications include a series of papers on the effects of flatworm parasites (trematodes) on a species of marine snail .9-11These papers showed that parasitism by larval trema- todes causes abnormal growth in the marine snail. Trematode infestation also causes variations in shell development. Miriam Rothschild These findings had important implica- tions for snail taxonomy. searches. Similarly, her father had main- Rothschild inherited from her father tained that formal education stifled in- an interest in fleas. Charles Rothschild tellectual creativity. had amassed at Tring Museum the larg- Rothschild gleaned her education est collection of fleas in existence. He from her parents, her uncle’s museum, coauthored many papers with Karl Jor- and her own wide reading. Her own at- dan, a curator of Tnng Museum and a titude toward formal education might be respected entomologist. Among these summed up by her statement, “The was a paper identifying the plague-carry- types of tests devised by the appropriate ing rat flea Xenopsylla cheopis. Iz authorities in Britain today assess the Initially, however, fleas were a size of the child’s bottom rather than sideline for Rothschild. Although she that of its head. “s Although she did take occasionally published descriptions of courses at the University of London, she new species, she did not study fleas in has never received a formal degree. In- depth until the 1950s. Then she began stead, she chose to work outside the cataloging her father’s flea collection. educational system. The academic cre- The first of the six-volume series cover- dentials Rothschild has acquired, such ing the taxonomy and morphology of the as the honorary doctor of science degree collection was published in 1953. Roth- she received from the Uni~ersit y of Ox- schild coauthored five of these volumes ford in 1968, she wrested from the edu- with G. Harry Hopkins.13 She has re- cational establishment by the sheer com- cently coauthored another work based pelling merit of her research. Her work on her father’s collection. 14 also earned her the status of honorary Around this time Rothschild also pub- fellow, St. Hughs College, Oxford. lished jointly with Theresa Clay, former- Despite her lack of formal credentials, ly of the British Museum of Natural she served as visiting professor of History, a popular work entitled Fleas, biology at the Royal Free Hospital Flukes & Cuckoos. 15 Thk was part of a School of Medicine, London, from 1968 series intended to promote neglected to 1973. facets of British natural history such as Lack of conventional education has in parasitology. In it Rothschild explained no way curbed Rothschild’s research for the lay reader parasitism, symbiosis, output. She has published over 275 and other species interrelationships. The 121 book incorporated many of her in- was also found that in nature rabbit fleas terests, as it discussed fleas, protozoa, copulate only on newborn rabbits, al- flatworms, flies, mites, microparasites, thchsgh they mature sexually on the preg- the fauna of birds’ nests, skuas (gull-like nant doe. The fleas transfer from the seabirds), and European cuckoos. Clay mother to the newborns at parturition of contributed a chapter on feather lice. the host. Thk ensures a food supply for Fleas, Flukes & Cuckoos proved that the flea larvae, which feed on debris in Rothschild could communicate science the rabbh nest. Rothschild, Ford, and in a very palatable fashion. Characteris- M. Hughes identified a pheromone, an tically, she served up the facts with a airborne chemical stimulus produced by generous measure of levity. For exam- the newborn rabbits, that aids sexual ple, she introduced her discussion of maturation. 19But they concluded that a avian fleas by saying: “Birds’ fleas and simple change of host actuafly induces feather lice do not sing. Nor do they fly copulation of the sexually mature, egg- about flashing brilliantly coloured wings bearing fleas. The rabbit flea was the in the sunshine. It is scarcely surprising first known case of an insect parasite that in Britain bird and butterfly enthusi- whose reproductive cycle is dependent asts number thousands, but the collec- on that of its host.zf~ tors of fleas and lice can be counted on Rothschild’s flea studies included an the fingers of one hand.”! ~ (p. 56) elucidation of their jumping mecha- But Rothschild’s most important work nism. In a series of articles published in on fleas was yet to come. In the early the early 1970s, Rothschild and asso- f950s, the British Ministry of Agricul- ciates used high-speed photography ture formed a committee (which Roth- combined with precise morphological schild was in~ited to join) to study the studies to determine the exact jumping flea’s role in transmitting myxomatosis, a mechanism of Xenop.ry//a cheopis, the viral disease of South American rabbits. vector of plague.zl-z~ Their findings sug- The disease had reached England and gest that fleas are descended from was devastating the British rabbit popu- winged ancestors, since the jumping lation. To conduct the study, it was nec- mechanism employs modified flight essary to breed the rabbit flea in captiv- structures. These include the presence ity. Other flea species bred readily in the of resilin, a rubber-like protein, in the laboratory, but the rabbit flea would not pleural arch of the flea’s thorax. cooperate. Rothschild suggested that Rothschild’s flea research features the host’s hormone cycle might influ- prominently in the citation accompany- ence the flea’s sexual maturation. This ing her honorary degree from Oxford.2-t hunch was borne out when an associate The citation refers to her coming “to this demonstrated that the ovaries of the our Capitol, not by degrees, but by one female rabbit flea matured only on preg- leap as of her fleas, in a triumphal chari- nant rabbits. lb ot, so to speak, drawn not by Venus’ Rothschild then conducted a series of doves, Juno’s peacocks, Alexander’s experiments to determine which hor- gryphons. Pompey’s elephants, but by mones were at work. She and an asso- her sixty-odd species of avian parasites. ” ciate, Bob Ford, showed that corticoste- The citation goes onto itemize her work roids produced by the adrenal glands on fleas, saying, “One flea (of the genus during late pregnancy, as well as estro- [sic] irritans) is enough for most of us, gens, are the most influential hormones but she has faced some twenty-two thou- controlling ovarian maturation. 1“ 18 It sand and dispatched them. ” 122 Although Rothschild’s work in orni- According to SCI for the period thology is not as extensive as her work in 1955-1983, Rothschild most-cited ex- fleas, to some extent these studies over- perimental paper in this field, cited 75 lap.