The bug-hunters discovering new species in their spare time (BBC/PRI)

[eppur_se_muova]

By Ari Daniel Shapiro
PRI's The World, Mercantour, France

Everyone knows there are lots of species yet to be discovered in rainforests and remote parts of the world. But hundreds are being discovered every year in Europe too - most of them by amateurs.

"If you want to find something new, you have to go to a place nobody has been before," says Jean-Michel Lemaire.

"You have to open your eyes."

Lemaire is a retired mathematician from south-east France with a passion for beetles.

In the last few years, Lemaire has found seven new species.
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more (including slideshow): http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-21458463

I have checked my memory with Doris, who also knew Haldane well, and what he actually said was: "God has an inordinate fondness for beetles." J.B.S.H. himself had an inordinate fondness for the statement: he repeated it frequently. More often than not it had the addition: "God has an inordinate fondness for stars and beetles." . . . Haldane was making a theological point: God is most likely to take trouble over reproducing his own image, and his 400,000 attempts at the perfect beetle contrast with his slipshod creation of man. When we meet the Almighty face to face he will resemble a beetle (or a star) and not Dr. Carey [the Archbishop of Canterbury]."