MEET THE SCIENTIST
Karim Vahed
Entomologist and England manager at invertebrate conservation charity Buglife
KARIM VAHED HAS BEEN FASCINATED BY insects for longer than he can remember: “My mother informs me that when I was still in nappies, I would spend ages watching ants in the garden.” Karim studied biological sciences, followed by a PhD. He joined the University of Derby as a lecturer in 1993, conducting research on crickets and bush crickets alongside teaching. Karim became professor of entomology in 2012: “Part of the appeal of insects is that they are incredibly diverse in terms of numbers of species, their morphology and behaviour.”
“The conservation and environmental sector has been identified as one of the least ethnically diverse in the UK,” he says. “This is also reflected in the diversity of students at degree level.” This might be because people from ethnic minorities are more likely to be under parental pressure to aim for ‘prestigious’, high-paid careers. A lack of role models is another factor, but “things are beginning to improve”, Karim states, citing natural history television presenters.
“Becoming a father in 2007 indirectly led me to focus on scaly crickets, Pseudomogoplistes vicentae,” says Karim. “I no longer wanted to spend summers doing fieldwork overseas.” One exciting discovery he made was that females lay eggs in driftwood and that these take a year to hatch: “They may be able to disperse to new beaches by ‘rafting’.”
“I’m excited about my new position at Buglife as it is the only organisation in the UK concerned with the protection of all invertebrates,” he says. One of Karim’s responsibilities is overseeing projects that support the recovery of some of our most threatened species and their habitats.
“Public perception of some groups of invertebrates is a problem,” he says. “A recent survey of over 2,000 people by one of my project students found that spiders and flies, for example, were ranked much lower than other arthropods in terms of their likability.” But he believes with the right approach, changing attitudes is possible.