By Leila T. Shirai
Soon after arriving at the Freitas lab, it was clear that the quality of the work developed here had roots from before Freitas’ time. The Ecology Grad Course at the State University of Campinas (Unicamp) is one of the best of its kind in the country. Its communication with the Botany Department made structural contributions to public policies and science funding in the state of São Paulo. Closer to Freitas, his mentor, Prof. Keith S. Brown Jr., brought an unimaginable amount (literally, over 200,000 individuals) of butterflies from hundreds of places in South America, many of which were never sampled before and are no longer forested – a brave effort at times when internet did not exist, and phones barely made their way through the jungle. Brown, an Eco-evo-devo-ist before the term was coined, had a chemical ecologist view, and a deep understanding of the importance of basic knowledge (taxonomy, systematics, morphological descriptions) to address big questions, which was inherited by Freitas, who leads the Butterfly Ecology and Systematics lab today.
Freitas’ passion for nature started when he was little, and it bloomed with butterflies under another of his mentors: Ronaldo B. Francini. When Freitas was 16, they would go to the field at Serra do Mar, the largest Atlantic Forest remnant at the coast of São Paulo state, work that resulted in his first scientific publication while he was an undergraduate student at Unicamp. Since then, he has managed to bring almost all scientific and outreach activities together using butterflies and moths (Lepidoptera) as model systems, touching several people and enchanting them with his adored butterflies. He has advised 29 undergrad monographies, 16 Master theses (+ 1 ongoing), 7 Doctoral dissertations (+ 4 ongoing), has over 200 publications and authored 4 books, contributed to over 55 scientific journals as a peer-reviewer, teaches undergrad and postgraduate courses, was Head of the Zoology Department for 8 years, plays the flute (in a Renaissance band called Zebu Trifásico), and has now started investing in outreach films.
How can he do it? He has studied butterflies in the field, museums and the literature for decades, his mind is a web, he multi-tasks, he is fast and sharp; we say that when he passes, it feels like a hurricane hit us. It is breath-taking, but worth it. He has a deep knowledge about several aspects of the lives of butterflies – no wonder he is recognized as one of the top butterfly specialists in the world. But, unlike many scientists, he is still in love with what he does, and he cares about people. Thus, many of those who worked with or for him wish to continue doing so, and he has become a hub for scientists and amateurs studying Neotropical butterflies. Most notably, he is humble, which makes him always open to new fields or ideas. And he trusts us, which grants us with a liberty of shaping our own research agendas (albeit with lots of learning from mistakes!). And well, his jokes could be better, but no one can complain about a light, laughable environment in the dry desert academia can sometimes be.
Although the lab has two main research lines (ecology and systematics), there are also other projects, such as mine, on the evo-devo of butterfly wing patterns, and those of two other post-docs, on the chemical basis structuring multi-trophic interactions among plants, herbivores, and parasitoids. Almost all lab members are involved with field work, lab work, and specimen preparation for the Unicamp Zoology Museum collection, producing morphological and molecular data to address our questions. A typical day in the life of Freitas lab includes: someone spreading butterflies, someone compiling species lists or distribution data, someone flipping through catalogues to pre-identify species (confirmed by the encyclopedia in Freitas’ head), another measuring or photographing in the stereoscope, the rotation of those rearing a large batch of new eggs, a group organizing the next field trip, the stressed ones writing a manuscript or their theses/dissertations, and several of us knocking at his door to solve issues of many kinds.
It is quite frequent to open the door and find Freitas using his magnifying glass, cutting host plants or cleaning larvae. Rearing butterfly immatures reveals similarities of shared histories that adults no longer present. When two adult butterflies imitate one another, we may think they are closely related. But when we grow larval and pupal stages, and we may see that one resembles a different group, and thus discover where in the tree of life that species may actually belong. The rearing and description of immatures by Freitas and the students who have learned from him has already contributed to the description of these hidden life stages in over 100 Neotropical species.
Another strong contribution to science, happening daily in the lab, is the description of new species, and the organization of described ones. There are about 20,000 butterfly species in the world, 3,000 of which are in Brazil. Butterflies are not just beautiful, they are great model systems for ecological, evolutionary, and developmental questions, and have been used as such for centuries. They are also good bio-indicators, reflecting different types of environment and the changes that occur in them. Butterflies are thus relevant to conservation, being one of the few flagship invertebrate groups that aid to the protection of Brazilian biomes. To serve all these purposes well, it is central to know how many species there are, how they differ from one another, where they are, and what they do. The more we know about the intimacy of butterflies, the better we can predict scenarios for a bearable future. But here their beauty helps, because the multi-colored wing and body patterns attract the attention of people who might then become interest to learn all those other (scientific) things we discover with them – maybe this has already happened to you!? When we run after them with the entomological net, we are not only “SpongeBob-ing,” we are trying to reveal the secrets of nature and figuring out ways to keep it as staggering and mysterious as it is.
Leila T. Shirai
Post-doctoral fellow FAPESP 2014/23504-7
“The contribution of the developmental hierarchy on morphological diversification”
Versão em Português: Um dia no laboratório do André Freitas
See also: A day in the life of a butterfly lab