10A
NEWS
THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN WEDNESDAY MAY 6, 2009
SCIENCE
WEDNESDAY MAY 6,2009
Biology of beetle juice among KU professor's research
BY KEVIN HARDY khardy@kansan.com
Beetle juice has a new meaning for one KU researcher.
Caroline Chaboo, professor of ecology and evolutionary biology, is researching the chemicals and toxins within Chrysomelidae, a genus of small African leaf beetles.
The toxins are so powerful that members of San Bushmen, a tribe in southern Africa, mash up the bug's larvae to put on the tips of arrows. The poison on the arrows is strong enough to kill animals as large as giraffes.
Chaboo will present the lecture "Biology, Evolution and Defensive Behaviors in Leaf Beetles: From the Unusual to the Weird" at 7 p.m.
It's the last installment of the Natural History Museum's Wild Science lecture series this year.
Chaboo said the beetles came in different color variations — red and yellow, black and yellow, and red.
"If you think about a fire truck that's red, the red is kind of an alert color," Chaboo said. "It tells you something about the animal before you've even touched it or tried to eat it."
The chemicals inside the beetles cause the predator to vomit or die after eating them, which serves as the only defense mechanism for the centimeter-long beetles.
In addition to studying the beetles, Chaboo is examining the plants the beetles eat to determine whether the toxins come from the beetles themselves or from their food source.
Chaboo's work also examines the culture of the San tribe.
She said the cultural study of the San tribe was just as important as the biological study. Because
She visited Africa four times in the past four years, conducting research in South Africa, Botswana and Namibia.
**WHAT:** Wild Science
Lecture: "Biology, Evolution and Defensive Behaviors in Leaf Beetles: From the Unusual to the Weird"
**WHEN:** 7 p.m. today
**WHERE:** KU Natural History Museum
WHO: Caroline Chaboo,
professor of ecology and
evolutionary biology
COST: Free and open to the
public
they have lost much of their native land, Chaboo said, it was even more urgent to study the San people.
"Essentially, what is going on with the San people is going on with indigenous people throughout the world — they are being marginalized," Chaboo said.
She said the San tribe was a primitive tribe that still used tongue clicking as its language.
"They are considered the first branch of modern human," Chaboo said.
The San people still use bow and arrows for hunting, and they mash up the beetle juice into a thick, gluey paste and put it on each arrowhead. After hitting an animal, the tribesmen track the animal's footprints, because it can take several days for the poison to kill large animals.
"In many ways, her work demonstrates how much we need to be aware of cultural adaptations and how much cultural systems and natural systems affect each other," Kristhalka said.
Leonard Kristalka, director of the Biodiversity Institute, said the San people were careful when collecting larvae, taking only one beetle at a time and leaving the underground nest intact. He said Chaboo's work went beyond traditional biology to include the study of the surrounding culture.
Andrew Short, adjunct assistant professor of ecology and evolutionary biology, said studying the human uses of the beetles could lead to a better understanding of biological sciences and the San people.
"Some of the beetles Dr. Chaboo studies have profound, ancient cultural significance, which adds a layer to her research program that is much less commonly encountered in our field." Short said.
Chaboo said she was assembling a team of collaborators in chemistry, anthropology and botany to further her research on the African beetles.
— Edited by Andrew Wiebe
CONTRIBUTED PHOTOS
Above: From left, Michael Kazondunge, a Namibian high school student and translator, two members of the San Bushmen tribe and Caroline Chaboo, professor of ecology and evolutionary biology, dig for beetle larvae near the base of a host plant at the Tsumkwae Nature Conservancy, in northeastern Namibia. Chaboo has traveled to Africa four times in her research on poisonous African beetles.
Left: A bow, quiver and arrows used by San Bushmen in Southern Africa. The tribesman mash up poisonous beetle larvae and apply it on arrows to kill prey during hunting.
EDUCATION
Obama considering future of No Child Left Behind
BY LIBBY QUAID
Associated Press
BUNKER HILL, W.Va. - Special education teacher Lynn Reichard has a problem with the federal No Child Left Behind law: Some of her kids cannot read, never mind pass its required state test.
Reichard told Education Secretary Arne Duncan on Tuesday that she works all year long to boost the self-esteem of mentally impaired students at Bunker Hill Elementary, only to see them fall apart over standardized tests.
"They feel so good about them
selves, and then they look at a two-
paragraph reading passage, and they know six words," Reichard said. "I have one child here that's a nonreader, and she's going to have take the test, and she's going to cry.
"There's just got to be another answer for that," Reichard said.
Reichard was among a dozen teachers and parents who met with Duncan as the Obama administration considers changing the controversial law championed by former President George W. Bush.
No Child Left Behind pushes schools to boost the performance of low-achieving students, and Duncan gives the law credit for shining a spotlight on kids who need the most help. Opponents,
however, insist that the law's annual reading and math tests have squeezed subjects like music and art out of the classroom and that schools were promised billions of dollars they never received.
Duncan wants to hear how the program works from educators, parents and kids, and he began a 15-state "listening tour" at Reichard's school in the eastern panhandle of rural West Virginia. President Barack Obama has been vague about much he would overhaul the law, but on Tuesday, his ideas began to take shape.
The teacher was right, Duncan said later.
While the law does make allowances for different tests for severe-
iya impaired kids, many don't fall into that category.
"To have a child taking a test that it is literally impossible for them to pass and having that humiliation, and holding schools accountable for that, that doesn't make sense," Duncan said in an interview with the Associated Press.
Duncan used Reichard's tale as an example of how the federal government should be "looser" about how states meet goals. He fought the government on similar issues in his last job, as chief executive of Chicago's public schools.
At the same time, he said, the government should get "tighter" about goals, insisting on more rigorous academic standards that are
uniform across the states.
"What I mean by loose is not getting away from accountability at all," he told the AP. "What I mean by loose is giving folks more flexibility in how they achieve their goals."
Duncan made time to visit with kids, reading the book, "Doggie Dreams" to first-graders at Bunker Hill and having lunch with fourth-graders at Eagle Intermediate School in Martinsburg, where he ate a cheesesteak sandwich and onion rings but finished only half his vegetables.
"Who's the president now?" Duncan asked the first-graders, one of whom correctly identified Obama.
why they don't know it, something Duncan wants to see more. Federal dollars in the economic stimulus law can be used for those kinds of systems.
Duncan said he won't hesitate to visit struggling schools, too.
Whatever the administration decides to do, it needs the approval of Congress, which passed the law with broad bipartisan support in 2001 but deadlocked over a rewrite in 2007. Lawmakers plan to trv again in the fall.
While the law has helped improve the academic performance of many minority kids, English-language learners and kids with disabilities, critics say the law is too punitive: More than a third of schools failed to meet yearly progress goals last year, according to the Education Week newspaper.
That means millions of children are a long way from reaching the law's ambitious goals. The law pushes schools to improve test scores each year, so that every student can read and do math on grade level by the year 2014.
Both schools are high-performing and rely heavily on sophisticated data systems to explain not only what kids don't know, but
Duncan said little about the law Tuesday, preferring to listen to the concerns of teachers in more intimate sessions at elementary schools and a larger forum at Blue Ridge Community College in Martinsburg.
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