Teen eager for science journal

I was only thirteen at the time, but I do remember reading about it [entomologist Jonathan Waage's 1979 paper on damselfly sex], probably  in Kijk, the  Dutch high school science and technology monthly that I used to devour the moment it landed in our mailbox.

Menno Schilthuizen, Nature's Nether Regions: What the Sex Lives of Bugs, Birds, and Beasts Tell Us Abut Evolution, Biodiversity, and Ourselves (New York: Penguin Books, 2015), p. 109

(Kijk is apparently still going strong. Google tells me it means "look" in Dutch.)

Biological diversity? Look to the genitals

[O]f all the organs than an animal is provided with, the greatest differences between species are not in their brains or beaks, or in their kidneys or guts, but in their genitals. This applies to cave beetles, bumblebees, and elephant shrews, as well as to velvet worms, land slugs, water and rove beetles, small ermine moths, daddy longlegs spiders, banana and hover flies, egg parasitoid wasps, aquatic annelid worms, hoofed mammals, sharks and rays, primates, guppy fish, damselflies, land planarians, nematode worms, trombidiform mites, and harvestmen. To name but a few.

Menno Schilthuizen, Nature's Nether Regions: What the Sex Lives of Bugs, Birds, and Beasts Tell Us Abut Evolution, Biodiversity, and Ourselves (New York: Penguin Books, 2015), p. 34

Gems in the methods section of scientific papers

Scientific research papers are usually not particularly riveting reading material. The Materials and Methods section is often the least appealing, easily skipped in pursuit of more enticing bits. But it is in the "M&M" (as scientists call it) that, hidden under dull jargon and cloaked in the passive voice, the jewels of original scientific research lie. Condensed beyond recognition into terse, matter-of-fact sentences are days, months, sometimes years of hard, enjoyable, or exhilarating (but often also mind-numbingly dull) labor, moments of despair and jubilation, false starts, near give-ups, luminous ideas, and innovative inventiveness. And not infrequently a generous helping of courage.

Menno Schilthuizen, Nature's Nether Regions: What the Sex Lives of Bugs, Birds, and Beasts Tell Us About Evolution, Biodiversity, and Ourselves (New York: Penguin Books, 2015), p.59

Slugs as Lab Rats

I once watched an Irish mollusk researcher, in a fit of slug chauvinism, try to convince an audience of biologists that slugs are superior lab rats. "Behaviorally speaking, a slug is basically a rat," he told them. "Cover a rat in slime, amputate its legs, pull its genitalia up behind its right ear, and film it in slow motion, and you've got a slug!"

Menno Schilthuizen, Nature's Nether Regions: What the Sex Lives of Bugs, Birds, and Beasts Tell Us Abut Evolution, Biodiversity, and Ourselves (New York: Penguin Books, 2015), p. 168 (quoting Anthony Cook at the World Congress of Malacology in Siena, Italy, in 1992)

Just when you think the author has made his point . . .

[I]t may seem that we have a satisfactory outline and that the rest is just details. But when all seems crisp and clear and yet you're only halfway through a book, a plot twist lies around the corner.

Menno Schilthuizen, Nature's Nether Regions: What the Sex Lives of Bugs, Birds, and Beasts Tell Us Abut Evolution, Biodiversity, and Ourselves (New York: Penguin Books, 2015), p. 107

Why basic science? Entertainment!

Like art, music, and sports, basic science exists to provide a form of entertainment for the rest of humankind.

Menno Schilthuizen, Nature's Nether Regions: What the Sex Lives of Bugs, Birds, and Beasts Tell Us Abut Evolution, Biodiversity, and Ourselves (New York: Penguin Books, 2015), p. 184

Specialties in biology can limit

It is often not realized that the basic source of inspiration in biology, namely the endless diversity of life, is also one of its greatest handicaps. Biologists, much more than, say, chemists or mathematicians, tend to be divided by invisible barriers. Those barriers are held in place by expertise with a particular kind of organism. More often than not, biologists identify themselves as entomologists if they work with insects, or as botanists if plants are their thing. Or even as copepodologists, coleopterologists, or cecidomyiidologists (if their creed be copepods, beetles, or cecidomyiid gnats, respectively). And each organism-based field has its own congresses, professional societies, and journals, further affirming separatism. . . .

Biology really moves ahead when somebody dares to cut across all these different subfields and look for general patterns.

Menno Schilthuizen, Nature's Nether Regions: What the Sex Lives of Bugs, Birds, and Beasts Tell Us About Evolution, Biodiversity, and Ourselves (New York: Penguin Books, 2015), p. 4