Of Ants and Elephants: Measuring Student Appreciation for Insects and Charismatic Megafauna During an African Safari

kpart of an International Field Trip in Biology class through the Study broad Program at Iowa State University,we had as a goal to impress university students of various academic backgrounds with the insects ofthe Serengeti region in east Africa.The Matthiessen quote hints at our a priori expectation and main obstacle-wondrous distraction. The promoted goal of the field trip was to educate and expose students to the natural history of northern Tanzania, with a focuson the mammalian and avian fauna, the varied grassland-bushland-montane forest ecosystems, Rift Valley geology, and Maasaiculture. The course, conducted during 2005, consisted of16 weekly,in-class lectures followed by a three-week safari in northern Tanzania to Serengeti, Tarangire, Lake Manyara and Arusha national parks, Ngorongoro Crater Conservation Area, and Lake Natron. The class demography included an instructor (MER), a teaching assistant (JOB), and 16 students representing seven majors (Table 1). We expected that students would be so amazed at experiencing an environment with such a diverse and abundant charismatic megafauna that introducing insects to them (none of the students was an entomology major) would prove an interesting challenge. Weestablished a hypothesis that the relative desirability or appreciation of insects (or arthropods broadly) to non-entomology students would not be changed substantially by a biology field trip to Tanzania.