Museo Ciencias Naturales Longinos Navas 3

The animals that captured my scientific curiosity were insects and to them I dedicated a long and meticulous investigation throughout my life Insects are arthropods and represent the most numerous and diverse group of living animals There are more than a million known species with about 200 million individuals for each human Insects and plants are the best example of coevolution While they provide them with nectar and pollen they help with pollination An insect has a head thorax and abdomen It is characterized by having a pair of antennae three pairs of legs and two pairs of wings that can be reduced or even absent They are able to live in most terrestrial environments and feed on a variety of resources As a result of these adaptations they exhibit an exceptional variety of shapes colors and behaviors Many toxic species such as bees and wasps display bright colors that serve as a warning signal to their enemies Informing them of its toxicity or danger The legs of insects have different functions Bees for example have small pockets on their hind legs where they store the pollen they collect Grasshoppers can make sounds by rubbing them against their bodies And their powerful hind legs allow them to move with large jumps The most common insect groups are the orthopterans lepidopterans dipterans coleopterans and hymenopterans Grasshoppers crickets and locusts belong to the group of orthopterans They are characterized by having their hind legs adapted for jumping When they have wings they only retain the second pair The first pair is leathery meaning hard and covers the hind wings when the insect is at rest The beetle group includes beetles and constitutes the most numerous animal order today Their main characteristic is that they only have a pair of wings Since the first pair has transformed into cases called elytra that contain the wings and cover the abdomen Helitros only open when the beetle is about to take flight Butterflies include both day-flying and night-flying species They have two pairs of membranous wings with colored scales that allow each species to be identified They feed by sucking nectar from flowers and in the process pollinate them For this they have a long tube called a proboscis It remains coiled when not feeding and helps them reach the nectar of flowers True flies such as houseflies or mosquitoes are characterized by having a pair of wings Since the other pair has turned into stabilizers called alterios that are used as stabilizers during flight Finally hymenopterans such as ants bees or wasps have two pairs of membranous wings when they have them For egg-laying the females have the ovipositor at the end of the abdomen That in some species turns into a venomous stinger as in the case of bees and some wasps Both bees and wasps sting only as a defense of themselves or their nests In all my years as a naturalist I have studied and discovered more than 3 300 new insect species Among genera species and varieties More than half of them were neuroptera my specialty I have published more than 600 papers in journals around the world including extensive monographs I have participated in conferences in Spain Austria Belgium England Germany France Italy Hungary and Portugal I believe I have contributed with a lifetime of work to adding my small part to the understanding of nature Even in art I conveyed my passion for entomology to my students among whom was Luis Buñuel The collections I made for my work along with the exchange of specimens with other naturalists e valuable donations from Spanish and foreign colleagues and the contributions of exotic specimens from the missions in the Philippines and South America They contributed to enhancing the excellent collection of the Museum of Natural History of the Salvador de Zaragoza College opened in 1873 It is the same collection that you can view now at the Old Faculty of Medicine and Sciences in Zaragoza And I only wish that you enjoy it as much as I did treasuring it