QUT evolutionist out to understand a bug’s life

To the everyday person they may just be annoying bugs, but to a leading Queensland University of Technology (QUT) researcher they are the “little things which rule the world”.

Dr Stephen Cameron, a Research Fellow from QUT’s Science and Engineering Faculty, has been awarded a Future Fellowship worth almost $700,000 to analyse genomic data to find out how insects evolved and, in doing so, come to a greater understanding of what makes insects such a successful branch on the tree of life.

Dr Cameron will use DNA testing to see how different groups of insects have interacted with each other and their environment over time and what has driven their tremendous species diversity.

“As part of the study, we will be developing a tree of life using genomic data to depict the evolution of insects,” the evolutionary biologist said.

Dr Cameron will also study what body features and lifestyle traits are important to insect evolutionary success, and how their interactions with different environments are responsible for their endless diversity of forms.

“For example, I will look at the ways insects interact with plants - do they use plants to pollinate, or eat leaves or shelter under bark - to determine how large a role each has played in their evolution, and how many times such interactions have evolved independently over time.

“By doing this we can gain a functional understanding of how insects exploit different habitats and how this has affected their diversity.”

Dr Cameron said insects were the most successful biological group in Earth’s history.

“In fact, they are the biggest group of life and make up 70% of life of Earth,” he said.

“They run terrestrial ecosystems from pollination to decomposition, so everything from birth to death is done by insects.

“On land and in freshwater, insects dominate everything.”

As part of the four-year project, Dr Cameron is collaborating with researchers in the US and Germany.