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Read on for an exclusive interview with author Philip Howse, and enjoy a sneak preview into his up and coming book.

Author: Philip Howse

Book: Butterflies – Messages from Psyche

Profile: Professor Philip Howse has published several books and numerous research articles on insect behaviour and ecology. He has developed novel environmentally-friendly methods for the control of insect pests, recognised by a number of awards including the OBE. After a career spent mainly at Southampton University, he has now retired but continues writing about the insects that have fascinated him since he was a boy. For further details please visit www.howsepe.co.uk

Firstly, why did you decide to write the book?

I first became interested in the tobacco advertisements for Silk Cut and other brands, which played games with visual perception, like much of surrealist art. I thought this could provide the reasons for some of the bizarre colour patterns of insects, and published a scientific paper outlining a theory of what I called “satyric mimicry”. I then focussed on the death’s head hawk moth, which has always been an enigma for entomologists and realised that the skull marking, seen from the appropriate angle, was in fact a crude image of the head of a giant hornet. From that point on, I found more and more examples of images of parts of dangerous animals: teeth, eyes, claws, beaks etc. embedded in the wing patterns of butterflies and moths, and realised that I had stumbled on a new form of mimicry. My ideas needed to be presented with a lot of illustrations so people could see what I had learnt to see. The key to this new theory of mimicry is that visual perception in insectivorous animals is often very different from human visual perception, and that animals see detail first and not the “big picture” that we see.

Which butterfly or moth species is your favourite and why?

Difficult to select one among so many exquisitely coloured examples. Perhaps the Monarch, which is most people’s favourite butterfly, and one that deserves its name. There are so many fascinating aspects of its behaviour and ecology which all interlink. The caterpillars feed on highly toxic milkweeds, so the adult is also toxic to predators. The mass migrations it makes each year from North America to overwintering sites in Mexico (and then back again in the spring) are one of the wonders of the natural world.

What was your first childhood encounter with a butterfly or moth?

My mother calling me excitedly to show me a small tortoiseshell she had captured in a jam jar. After examining a butterfly at close quarters for the first time I was hooked on entomology.

In your experience, which particular illusion encountered on the wings of a butterfly or moth is the most deceiving or confusing and why?

One of the most deceptive to predators must be the snake image on the wing borders of the giant Atlas moth. It’s easy to see the snake’s head, but the image of the body is marked along the edge of each fore- and hind-wing. When the insect is molested it falls to the ground and flaps its wings slowly, giving the illusion of the writhing of the snake defined on the wing borders. Animals, of course, like us, tend to be startled by anything snake-like. But then again, the eyed hawk-moth is a great illusionist. No-one has previously noticed that when you get down close to it and it turns towards you and displays its eye-spots, that it presents the face of a fox. If you find that difficult to accept, look at the photographs taken at bird’s eye level.

Your environmentally-friendly methods of pest control have been recognised by several awards. Could you tell us a bit more about this work?

While studying insectivorous pitcher plants in a search for new insect attractant odours, I became interested in the coating of fine wax particles in the neck of the plants. When insects try to walk on this layer the wax sticks to the suction pads on their feet by electrostatic forces and causes them to slip helplessly into the bottom of the pitcher. I first designed cockroach and fly traps that used this principle: they were simple traps that required neither synthetic insecticides nor  electrical grids. The cockroach trap won a Prince of Wales Award for Innovation, and this and two kinds of fly trap were selected for show-casing in the Millennium dome.

I also invented a novel method of controlling agricultural and horticultural pests using wax powders. The powder is used as a carrier for sexual pheromones and sticks to the bodies of insects. Male moths attracted to powder containing female pheromone then start to smell like females, and this, not surprisingly, disrupts the mating process. In this way it is possible to manage pests in orchards using only  fractions of a milligram of the pheromone, and no insecticide. In 1999 the University of Southampton set up a spin-off company, Exosect Ltd, which won a number of awards for technological innovation in agriculture, and I left the University to become the first Technical Director until I retired in 2004. In the Millennium year I was awarded the OBE for contributions to pest control. Exosect has now succeeded in registering products for use in Europe, the USA and the Far East, and the technology is now starting to be adopted on a large scale for control of crop pests.

What have been your main sources of inspiration while writing the book?

The enthusiastic support of Clive Farrell, of Butterfly World, and access to his extensive collection of photographs; Kirby Wolfe’s collection of stunning photographs of Saturniid moths, which he made available to me, and the confidence of the late Andreas Papadakis in this project.

Butterflies – Messages from Psyche will be available in May. To pre-order your copy please click here.