JP Michaud’s Fascination with Insects

JP Michaud, PhD and professor of Entomology at Kansas State University, did not intend to become an entomologist.

He was drawn to insects as “very useful, short-lived organisms” for testing evolutionary hypotheses during his graduate studies in ecology. Michaud explains, “If you’re working with beef cattle well, your herd size limits how many experiments you can do. But with insects, you can have a herd in a Petri dish.” Their rapid generations enabled experiments impossible with longer-lived species.

Intrigued by their value as “working models,” Michaud focused his doctoral research on aphid parasitoids. As a postdoc in Florida, he investigated parasitoids and predators for controlling citrus aphids and diseases. He discovered that “the lady beetles are doing all the work eating all the aphids.” This shifted his attention to lady beetles.

Joining Kansas State University, Michaud focused on the biological control of aphids on wheat. He takes a "whole ecosystem" perspective, emphasizing the need for diverse natural enemies like parasitoids, predators, and pathogens to control pests. Michaud believes sustainable pest management requires conserving and promoting biological diversity.

A core message of Michaud’s work is appreciating insects’ varied ecological roles, not just as pests. He highlights how insects comprise “the base of the animal food chains,” supporting fish, bird and mammal populations. Michaud notes that “flowers would not exist without pollinating insects,” as flowering plants evolved to attract insect pollinators. Insects even facilitate essential decomposition processes on land and in water.

For higher animals, there is nothing to replace insects. “You look at the grizzly bears, in the summertime, they are way up in the mountains in Wyoming, above the tree line, feeding on army cutworm moths. The moths migrate there from the prairies by the billions every summer, and those bears will subsist on these moths – they’re seventy percent fat, and one bear will eat twenty to twenty-five thousand moths a day.”

However, Michaud warns that modern agriculture threatens vital insect populations and services. He laments, “Now we’re almost back to World War 2 practices, when they were hosing everything down with DDT” due to widespread use of preventive insecticide seed treatments. These endanger natural pest control, as “nothing can live on the plant for the first 4-6 weeks, and many other non-pest arthropods such as decomposers are also killed.” Michaud cautions this is “taking away the food supply for the entire food web.”

While recognizing the challenges, Michaud remains optimistic progress is possible. He points to the wider adoption of no-till farming, cover crops, and breeding resistant crop varieties as encouraging signs. Michaud argues that “we need to accept lower yields and a certain amount of crop loss to pests and disease” to have a balanced ecosystem providing ecological services like pest regulation. He believes sustaining productive agriculture requires working with nature, not against it.

Michaud stresses the intrinsic value of insects as fascinating creatures, not merely pests. Their diversity, abundance, and pervasiveness in sustaining wildlife and ecological processes make protecting insects an ethical obligation. While insects face daunting threats, Michaud remains “hopeful we can change course towards stewarding a healthy biosphere where insects continue their vital supporting role.”