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Trouble With Tiger Beetles: Singapore Science Centre’s Wallace
Exhibition Spreads Tiger Beetle Myth
GEORGE BECCALONI
Curator of Orthopteroid Insects &
Director of the A. R. Wallace Correspondence Project,
Life Sciences Department,
The Natural History Museum,
South Kensington,
London SW7 5BD, UK
E-mail: g.beccaloni@nhm.ac.uk
"Every substantive claim in the popular narrative about Alfred Russel Wallace and evolution
turns out to be incorrect...Wallace deserves more attention but much of what you will have
heard about him in the last few months is factually incorrect..." John van Wyhe, 2013
In early December 2013 I gave an invited talk about Wallace at the Science Centre in
Singapore. Whilst there I had a look at “Island Adventurer”, the Centre’s new exhibition
about the great man, which runs from 30 November 2013 until 30 November 2014. I had
really been looking forward to seeing this display as I had been involved in the early
discussions about it some years ago.
My reactions to the exhibition were mixed. First the positive points: It is very nicely put
together, especially considering that there are no actual Wallace-owned items (specimens,
documents or other objects) on display. The videos, dioramas and ‘hands-on’ elements are
excellent technically and visually, and the Science Centre staff who produced them should be
praised for doing such a brilliant job. Overall I thought the exhibition was good, and whilst I
would certainly recommend going to see it, visitors should be aware that it contains a number
of serious historical inaccuracies. I am concerned that some of the tens of thousands of people
who have seen/will see this exhibition will spread these errors, and that they will end up
becoming accepted ‘facts’ in the literature… It is in a probably futile attempt to try to combat
this that I am writing this article.
The person responsible for the historical content of the exhibition is Darwin historian John
van Wyhe, so it is on his shoulders that responsibility for these mistakes must rest. The
Science Centre staff are not Wallace specialists, so would naturally have accepted the
information that van Wyhe provided. Van Wyhe, who is a lecturer at the National University
of Singapore, has recently ‘branched out’ from his often controversial work on Darwin, to
publish even more controversial work on Wallace - a notorious example being his 2013 book
Dispelling the Darkness: Voyage in the Malay Archipelago and the Discovery of Evolution
by Wallace and Darwin, from which most of the information in the Science Centre’s
exhibition is drawn. Van Wyhe is a revisionist, who specialises in ‘debunking’ supposed
historical myths. Unfortunately in his eagerness to revise established historical narratives
built up by the labours of scholars over many decades, he often makes mistakes, as we will
see. Although I spotted a number of problems with the story that van Wyhe presents in the
exhibition I will restrict myself to discussing his biggest blunder plus two more minor ones.
Malthusian Moment or Tiger Beetle Delirium?
Wallace famously discovered natural selection during a fit of fever (probably malaria) whilst
on a remote Indonesian island in February 1858. He had by this point in time been trying to
understand how transmutation (as evolution was then called) works for about 10 years, so
what (if anything) triggered his great discovery? Wallace himself states several times in his
published writings that it was his recollection of the argument in Thomas Malthus' book
Principle of Population (which he read in Leicester in 1844/45) that led to his epiphany.
Here, for example, is what Wallace wrote in his book Natural Selection and Tropical Nature
in 1891:
"…the question of how changes of species could have been brought about was rarely out of
my mind, but no satisfactory conclusion was reached till February 1858. At that time I was
suffering from a rather severe attack of intermittent fever at Ternate in the Moluccas, and one
day while lying on my bed during the cold fit, wrapped in blankets, though the thermometer
was at 88° F., the problem again presented itself to me, and something led me to think of the
"positive checks" described by Malthus in his "Essay on Population," a work I had read
several years before, and which had made a deep and permanent impression on my mind.
These checks—war, disease, famine and the like—must, it occurred to me, act on animals as
well as on man. Then I thought of the enormously rapid multiplication of animals, causing
these checks to be much more effective in them than in the case of man; and while pondering
vaguely on this fact there suddenly flashed upon me the idea of the survival of the fittest—
that the individuals removed by these checks must be on the whole inferior to those that
survived. In the two hours that elapsed before my ague fit was over I had thought out almost
the whole of the theory, and the same evening I sketched the draft of my paper, and in the
two succeeding evenings wrote it out in full, and sent it by the next post to Mr. Darwin." [for
an account of how the theory came to be jointly published with Darwin see my essay here:
http://downloads.bbc.co.uk/tv/junglehero/alfred-wallace-biography.pdf]
Without justification, van Wyhe rejects the account that Wallace gave of his own discovery
and instead invents a dramatic (and flawed) alternative story which is prominently featured in
van Wyhe’s book and in the Science Centre's exhibition. Van Wyhe’s tale is that Wallace
was so enamoured by the wonderful crypsis (background colour matching/camouflage) of
different species of tiger beetles (white species on white sand, dark species on grey sand, and
an olive green species on greenish mud) that this led to his “Eureka moment”. Although
Wallace did mention crypsis in tiger beetles in an obscure private letter and in some of his
later published writings as being a nice example of an adaptation which had evolved by
natural selection, he never said anywhere that these insects and their camouflage inspired
him to devise his revolutionary theory. In fact he very clearly says multiple times that
Malthus inspired him…
In his book van Wyhe enthuses:
"These tiger beetles would become the unsung inspiration for Wallace’s evolutionary
breakthrough." - p. 135
"Their exact match with the mud would make these tiger beetles his equivalent of Darwin’s
legendary finches. They could be called Wallace’s tiger beetles. They would spark the
greatest breakthrough of his life." - p. 186
"For Darwin, the spark was Galápagos mockingbirds and South American fossils; for
Wallace, the tiger beetles." - p. 318
van Wyhe's claim for the hallowed status of these beetles rests almost entirely on a very brief
remark that Wallace made in a letter to beetle collector Frederick Bates (Henry Walter Bates
brother) in March 1858, very soon after he discovered natural selection. The letter is largely
about the tiger beetles (then classified as part of the group Geodephaga) that Wallace had
found and that Frederick Bates was interested in acquiring for his collection. After
mentioning the impressive crypsis of some species Wallace remarks "Such facts as these
puzzled me for a long time, but I have lately worked out a theory which accounts for them
naturally." (the theory he refers to is of course natural selection which he had just
discovered). Notice that he does *not* say that such facts inspired him to discover the theory,
and also note that by "Such facts as these..." he clearly means that 'these' facts (i.e. crypsis in
tiger beetles, which is what he was referring to) were just one of a number of facts that
puzzled him and that are now explained by his theory. What he does *not* say is "These
facts puzzled me for a long time and led me to devise a theory to account for them naturally"
– which is how van Wyhe misreads Wallace’s remark.
To back up his story about the beetles, van Wyhe tells us on page 215 of his book that the
following passage in Wallace's 1858 essay on natural selection was "...inspired in part by the
tiger beetles." Wallace remarks "Even the peculiar colours of many animals, especially
insects, so closely resembling the soil or the leaves or the trunks on which they habitually
reside, are explained on the same principle..." However, there is absolutely no evidence that
Wallace had tiger beetles in mind when he wrote this, or indeed that camouflage in animals is
what ‘sparked’ his great discovery. As a seasoned collector and naturalist Wallace would
have encountered literally thousands of different animal species, insects in particular, which
exhibited remarkable camouflage. Camouflage as a form of protection is extremely
common in animals as any biologist will know, and there are countless species which
resemble soil, leaves and the bark of trees. And note that camouflage in animals was just one
of a several different examples of adaptations of organisms to their environment which
Wallace discusses in his landmark essay. It was certainly not the lynchpin of his argument.
Interestingly, in the first overview Wallace wrote about the subject of animal colouration
(Wallace, 1867) he remarks "The whole order of Orthoptera, grasshoppers, locusts, crickets,
&c., are protected by their colours harmonizing with that of the vegetation or the soil on
which they live, and in no other group have we such striking examples of special
resemblance. [my emphasis]" So perhaps camouflage in orthopteroid insects has a greater
claim to being the trigger of Wallace's 'Eureka moment'! Note too that camouflage in tiger
beetles isn't even mentioned in Wallace's important 1889 book Darwinism, in which the
subject of animal colouration is extensively reviewed.
van Wyhe's tiger beetle 'just-so story' is featured prominently in an animated video at the
beginning of the Science Centre's exhibition, and it even has an entire display dedicated to it.
Below are some photos I took.
Note that the display features four species of tiger beetles carefully placed on different
backgrounds (under the plastic domes shown in the photos below) in order to demonstrate
their fantastic camouflage (see below). However, the species shown against the background
of black gravel (i.e. Therates labiatus) is known to live and hunt on the low foliage of
rainforest plants *not* gravel (see http://hbs.bishopmuseum.org/pubs-online/pdf/iom15-
1.pdf), as too does "Therates Laterillei1", the species shown to be supposedly camouflaged
against variegated gravel. Both of these species are (ironically) probably warningly coloured
- the antithesis of being camouflaged.
Oversized Insect Labels
Wallace (or sometimes Charles Allen) put a label on every insect specimen
he or his assistants collected. These labels were pinned beneath the specimen
and consist of a circular disk of usually white, sometimes pale blue, paper
with the name of the locality where the specimen was collected written on it
in ink. The locality names are often abbreviated e.g. "Sing." for Singapore -
see example to the right.
A display in the Science Centre exhibition explains how these labels were
produced. It reads:
"On the uses of a wadding punch
Wallace could easily make labels in the field using his Wadding Punch – a standard bit of kit
that came with his gun. Normally, the punch would be placed on a few layers of linen and hit
smartly with a hammer to produce a series of neatly cut linen circles. These were then used as
gun wadding for proper gun firing. When applied to paper, the punch would make an infinite
supply of circular labels about half an inch [12.7mm] across – a perfect size for labelling
insects!”
However, to paraphrase Thomas Huxley: This is a nice theory is killed by one small ugly fact
- which is that Wallace's insect labels are all c. 8mm in diameter, not 12.7mm! [I have
examined hundreds of them] It would seem that van Wyhe only ever saw photographs of
Wallace’s labels, never an actual example; otherwise he would have realised that the ones he
describes were far too big. Presumably he thought they should be 0.5 inches in diameter since
that was the bore of the double barrelled shotguns that Wallace took with him to the ‘Malay
Archipelago’. But there is no actual evidence that Wallace used a gun wadding punch to
produce them – it was an assumption van Wyhe made probably based on the following
reasoning: Wallace’s labels were circular; Wallace would have had a gun wadding punch
which could have been used to produce circular paper disks; Wallace’s shotgun was .5 bore;
therefore he ‘must’ have produced his labels using his gun wadding punch and they therefore
‘must’ have been .5 inches in diameter…
The Dishonourable Arrangement
Towards the end of the exhibition there is a display entitled "A CONSPIRACY?" with
question and answers on flip panels. One of these is shown below.
But is this indeed “What really happened?” I suggest not. van Wyhe’s assertion (also in his
book) that it would have been ‘normal practice’ in the 19th century to publish a scholarly
article containing a revolutionary new theory without the author’s expressed permission is
absurd and completely unsubstantiated. In fact I have been unable to find a comparable case
in the entire history of science! Publishing another person’s work without their agreement
was as socially unacceptable then as it is today, not only that but it almost certainly broke the
copyright laws of the time (as it would today). Publishing someone’s novel theory without
their consent, prefixed by material designed to give priority of the idea to someone else [i.e.
Charles Darwin] is ethically highly questionable2: Wallace should have been consulted first!
The onus is on van Wyhe to provide some comparable examples (and note that publishing
excerpts from the ‘everyday’ letters of overseas collectors is an entirely different matter)…
What really happened is as follows: Wallace having discovered natural selection in February
1858, wrote a scholarly essay explaining his theory, and sent this together with a covering
letter to Charles Darwin. Wallace asked Darwin to pass the essay on to the great geologist
Charles Lyell (a friend of Darwin’s who Wallace did not know), because the argument in
Wallace’s essay was directed at what Lyell had written about evolution in his book Principles
of Geology (he was strongly opposed to the idea at that time). Wallace said nothing in his
letter about the publication of his essay3.
Darwin, having formulated natural selection years earlier, was understandably horrified when
he received Wallace’s essay and immediately wrote an anguished letter to Lyell asking for
advice on what he should do. "I never saw a more striking coincidence. If Wallace had my
M.S. sketch written out in 1842 he could not have made a better short abstract! ... So all my
originality, whatever it may amount to, will be smashed." he exclaimed4.
Lyell teamed up with another of Darwin's close friends, Joseph Hooker, and rather than
attempting to seek Wallace's permission, they decided instead to present his essay plus two
excerpts from Darwin’s writings on the subject (which had not been written for publication5)
to a meeting of the Linnean Society of London on July 1st 1858. This public presentation of
Wallace's essay took place a mere 14 days after its arrival in England.
Darwin and Wallace's musings on natural selection were published in the Society’s journal in
August that year under the title “On the Tendency of Species to Form Varieties; And On the
Perpetuation of Varieties and Species by Natural Means of Selection”. Darwin's contributions
were placed before Wallace's essay, in order to assert his priority of the theory. Hooker had
sent Darwin the proofs to correct and had told him to make any alterations he wanted6, and
although he made a large number of changes to the text he had written, he chose not to alter
Lyell and Hooker’s arrangement of his and Wallace’s contributions.
Lyell and Hooker stated in their introduction to the Darwin-Wallace paper that “…both
authors…[have]…unreservedly placed their papers in our hands…”, but this is patently
untrue since Wallace had said nothing about publication in the covering letter he had sent to
Darwin.
Wallace later grumbled that his essay “…was printed without my knowledge, and of course
without any correction of proofs."7 adding "I should, of course, like this act to be stated."
Endnotes
1. This is actually Therates latreillei, which is now a synonym of Therates laotiensis.
2. See Rachels, J. 1986. Darwin's moral lapse. National Forum: 22-24 (pdf available at
http://www.jamesrachels.org/DML.pdf)
3. In a letter from Darwin to Charles Lyell dated 18th [June 1858] (Darwin Correspondence
Database, http://www.darwinproject.ac.uk/entry-2285 accessed 23/04/2014), Darwin, who
was referring to Wallace's essay, says "Please return me the M.S. [manuscript] which he does
not say he wishes me to publish..." and in a letter from Darwin to Charles Lyell dated [25th
June 1858] (Darwin Correspondence Database, http://www.darwinproject.ac.uk/entry-2294
accessed 23/04/2014), Darwin states that "Wallace says nothing about publication..."
4. Letter from Darwin to Charles Lyell dated 18th [June 1858] (Darwin Correspondence
Database, http://www.darwinproject.ac.uk/entry-2285 accessed 23/04/2014).
5. These were an extract from Darwin’s unpublished essay on evolution of 1844, plus the
enclosure from a letter dated 5th September 1857, which Darwin had written to the American
botanist Asa Gray.
6. In a letter from Joseph Hooker to Darwin dated 13th and 15th July 1858 (Darwin
Correspondence Database, http://www.darwinproject.ac.uk/entry-2307 accessed 23/04/2014),
Hooker stated " I send the proofs from Linnæan Socy— Make any alterations you please..."
7. Letter from Wallace to A. B. Meyer dated 22nd November 1869 cited in Meyer, A. B.
1895. How was Wallace led to the discovery of natural selection? Nature, 52(1348): 415 (see
http://people.wku.edu/charles.smith/wallace/S516.htm). Note that van Wyhe attempts to
argue that in the 19th century the phrase “printed without my knowledge” actually meant
“…that a piece of writing was considered so worthy that it was printed even without the
author having to put it forward himself.”, rather than the “modern English” meaning "printed
without my consent" (see http://blog.oup.com/2013/11/alfred-russel-wallace-centenary/).
However, a quick search for the phrase “printed without my knowledge” in the 19th century
literature on Google Books reveals that van Wyhe is incorrect and that the phrase was
frequently/usually used to mean "printed without my consent". If we examine the context that
Wallace used the phrase i.e. “It [his ‘Ternate essay’] was printed without my knowledge, and
of course without [my emphasis] any correction of proofs.” it is clear that he was
complaining both that it was printed without his consent and without allowing him to correct
the proofs before the paper was published. That he was upset that he was not given the
opportunity to correct the proofs is evident from the corrections he made to his personal copy
of the published paper (see Beccaloni, 2008).
References
Beccaloni, G. 2008. Chapter 4. Wallace's annotated copy of the Darwin-Wallace paper on
natural selection. pp. 91-101. In: Smith, C.H. & Beccaloni, G. [Eds.]. Natural selection and
beyond: The intellectual legacy of Alfred Russel Wallace. Oxford, U.K.: Oxford University
Press.
van Wyhe, J. 2013. Dispelling the darkness: Voyage in the Malay Archipelago and the
discovery of evolution by Wallace and Darwin. Singapore: World Scientific Publishing Co.,
Pte. Ltd.
[Wallace, A. R.]. 1867. Mimicry, and other protective resemblances among animals.
Westminster Review, 32(1): 1-43.
Wallace, A. R. 1889. Darwinism: An exposition of the theory of natural selection with some
of its applications. London & New York: Macmillan & Co.
Wallace, A. R. 1891. Natural selection and tropical nature; essays on descriptive and
theoretical biology. London & New York: Macmillan & Co.
Citation
Please cite this article as: Beccaloni, G. 2014. Trouble with tiger beetles: Singapore Science
Centre’s Wallace exhibition spreads tiger beetle myth. Version 1.2 (April 2014)
<http://wallacefund.info/trouble-tiger-beetles-singapore-science-centre-s-wallace-exhibition-
spreads-tiger-beetle-myth>
