Jeremy McNeil Selected as Governor General Lecturer

Dr. Jeremy McNeil

Dr. Jeremy McNeil was chosen by the Royal Society of Canada to be this year's speaker for the Governor General Lecture Series

Exclusive to Science Flashpoint
By Mitchell Zimmer

When he was young, Jeremy McNeil’s interest in the insect world differed from those children who collected bugs. “I was never one of those maniac collectors … I have friends who are entomologists and have collected all of their lives,” he says. McNeil was more inquisitive about what insects did. “I remember things like, when I was quite young going home and saying to my parents, ‘I just saw a stick that walked’ and it wasn’t a walking stick. It was in the water and I saw this vegetation moving around. In actual fact, I found out many years later, that it was a Caddis fly that actually take stones and vegetation and build itself a house.”


McNeil’s interest in exploring the interrelationships between insects, humans and the environment has guided his career, although he admits that it did have a rocky start. “I really was a bad student,” he says. The turning point came when McNeil took both of Dr. Bill Judd’s courses at Western. “I actually found that I enjoyed both behavioural ecology and entomology.” His enthusiasm grew when he took a summer job working for Agriculture Canada in Harrow. While he was there, McNeil acquired training in integrative pest management and looked for alternatives to pesticides. After that experience, he decided to pursue academia “in spite of my bad grades.”


Later, as he went to work on his Ph.D. McNeil says he, “started getting interested in the interactions between plants and insects.” He also notes that, like us, insects use their various senses to accept or reject food plants. For instance, although an insect’s visual acuity is much less defined than a human’s, it is still able to visually distinguish factors such as size and colour to choose a host for its eggs whether the plant is a cabbage or a tree. McNeil’s main interest is in the field of chemical ecology where he studies the chemical cues that insects use with respect to its environment.


When an insect lands on a plant, it will taste it with the chemical receptors in its feet and mouth parts to see if that plant is a food source. In the area of mate selection, receptive female moths will emit pheromones which male moths of the same species can smell from a long distance away with their antennae. “We’re looking at all those different ways in which insects gain information from naturally occurring chemicals, be it positive or negative,” says McNeil. “Then we see if there is anyway we can use those to manipulate their behaviours in such a way that it either decreases their pestiferous nature or increases a beneficial one - if you can attract predators of an insect pest, you can manipulate the chemical environment that the smells are such that the predators come peeling in.”


McNeil points out that it is often a long road between observing interesting phenomenon, which may have a chemical basis, to using a substance in the field. “In order to be able to do so, you have to understand how they are modulated, what are the relative importance of the chemicals and can they be identified … then you have to do the laboratory assays to show that you can actually change the insect’s behaviour. Then you have the next step which is when you get out in the big wide world where it’s hot and it’s cold and it’s raining and it’s dry and the wind’s blowing and so on… and ask, how does it work then? If you can get through all of those steps then you can say, 'fine, we have a chemical let's see how we can manipulate the system.'”


Pheromones can act as an effective way to monitor pest populations. McNeil offers this example, “If you bait a trap with pheromone and less than 5 moths are caught per week there probably isn’t going to be an infestation. However, if there are a total of 20 to 30 moths per hour then a warning can be broadcast that in about 3 weeks the hatched larvae are going to be big enough to be causing some serious problems. The farmer then knows that the fields need to be monitored to see if the caterpillars can be found. If they are, then some thought has to be put to how farmers are going to intervene. Preferably, they will counteract with a non-pesticidal spray like BT or may be not, but at least you can forewarn them.” Adopting this strategy means that farmers can selectively spray for pests rather than indiscriminately spraying pesticides which are expensive and can add stress to the environment.


McNeil’s dedication to this research has earned him the Helen Battle Visiting Professorship in the Biology Department as well as numerous awards and honors. The most recent of which is his role as the current speaker in the Governor General Lectures Series of the Royal Society of Canada. This national research lecture tour aims to inform Canadians of the latest state of knowledge on topics of national interest. The series was initiated by the former Governor General of Canada, Adrienne Clarkson. These lectures also serve as a platform to discuss relevant national policy issues. “I’m basically talking about why we want to get rid of pesticides,” says McNeil, “and how understanding insect communication can be used for an applied approach but pointing out that this requires research.”
The lecture series began at the University of Victoria on September 19th and the second was presented at Acadia University on October 4th. The last two remaining venues included McMaster University on October 18th and McGill University on November 1st.


The talk is entitled "Eavesdropping on Mother Nature: In search of alternatives to synthetic pesticides.”

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