Each year, the first student worker in my lab to find a western corn rootworm beetle in the field wins a prize. My assistant, Elli Williamson, found that coveted beetle this year on July 6. Finding the first beetle is a sign that the summer’s real work can begin.
I started at the Illinois Natural History Survey on May 20, 1996. I was hired as a postdoctoral researcher to work on a USDA grant studying the behavior of the western corn rootworm alongside Eli Levine from INHS, Michael Gray from the U. of I. crop sciences department, and Scott Isard from the university’s geography department. At the time, the pest was “misbehaving” by laying eggs in unexpected places, like soybean fields, rendering it behaviorally resistant to annual crop rotation.
I had never seen a live western corn rootworm before coming to INHS. But by the time I started work with Eli, I’d digested a stack of papers and was thoroughly book-educated about the species and its resistance to crop rotation.
I spent many weeks in the spring of 1996 driving around with other researchers setting up plots and field sites where we would later trap and monitor the adult beetles.
My real work began 30 years ago on July 10, 1996, when I saw my first live western corn rootworm in a cornfield northeast of Urbana, Illinois. I did not suspect then that the little yellow and black beetle would become my teacher, co-conspirator, and inspiration for the next three decades of my career.
The western corn rootworm is a terrible pest that annually costs U.S. farmers more than $2 billion in combined losses and management costs. It is also the insect whose fascinating behavior, biology, physiology, and ecology have given me tremendous opportunities to study challenging problems, travel, and share what I have learned about one of the world’s most consequential pests with students, farmers, scientists, and others.
And it all began exactly 30 years ago, in an Urbana cornfield.