Biologist J. B. S. Haldane once quipped that if there's a God, the Creator seems to have “an inordinate fondness for beetles.”

Why? Well, 1/2 of species described in #science are insects (among eukaryotes). Of those, >1/3 are beetles, at ~400,000 known species.

I’m fond of these critters bc I began my career working with Plagiodera versicolora, a particularly cute beetle.

Now some entomologists suspect there may be just as many parasitic wasps but that’s a tale for another day.

@Sheril More on that Haldane quote: https://wist.info/haldane-jbs/1751/
(Attributed) - Haldane, J.B.S. | WIST Quotations

INTERVIEWER: What has the study of biology taught you about the Creator, Dr. Haldane? HALDANE: I'm not sure, but He seems to be inordinately fond of beetles. Variations are given in a variety of sources. A direct, citeable quote on the theme can be found in J.B.S. Haldane, What is…

WIST
@Sheril the quads on this one!
@Sheril Haldane also wrote the idiosyncratic children’s book My Friend Mr Leakey, one of the more unusual ways to discover biology & genetics when you went to see what else the author had written.
@Sheril Sir Terry Pratchett agrees about the beetles. And I think that biochemists would rather claim Haldane as one of their own. Polymath indeed.