Beulah Garner

FRES Fres () is a village and former municipality in the Chania regional unit, Crete, Greece. Since the 2011 local government reform, it is part of the municipality Apokoronas, of which it is a municipal unit. The municipal unit has an area of . The ...

is an

entomologist Entomology (from Ancient Greek ἔντομον (''éntomon''), meaning "insect", and -logy from λόγος (''lógos''), meaning "study") is the branch of zoology that focuses on insects. Those who study entomology are known as entomologists. In ...

in the United Kingdom. She is Senior

Curator A curator (from , meaning 'to take care') is a manager or overseer. When working with cultural organizations, a curator is typically a "collections curator" or an "exhibitions curator", and has multifaceted tasks dependent on the particular ins ...

at the

Natural History Museum, London The Natural History Museum in London is a museum that exhibits a vast range of specimens from various segments of natural history. It is one of three major museums on Exhibition Road in South Kensington, the others being the Science Museum (Lo ...

and is an expert of

beetles Beetles are insects that form the Taxonomic rank, order Coleoptera (), in the superorder Holometabola. Their front pair of wings are hardened into wing-cases, elytra, distinguishing them from most other insects. The Coleoptera, with about 40 ...

, in particular the

ground beetle Ground beetles are a large, cosmopolitan distribution, cosmopolitan family (biology), family of beetles, the Carabidae, with more than 40,000 species worldwide, around 2,000 of which are found in North America and 2,700 in Europe. As of 2015, it ...

s (Carabidae).

Education and career

Garner grew up in Norfolk and was educated at the

University of East Anglia The University of East Anglia (UEA) is a Public university, public research university in Norwich, England. Established in 1963 on a campus university, campus west of the city centre, the university has four faculties and twenty-six schools of ...

where she graduated with a BSc in

ecology Ecology () is the natural science of the relationships among living organisms and their Natural environment, environment. Ecology considers organisms at the individual, population, community (ecology), community, ecosystem, and biosphere lev ...

in 1998. She worked at

Rothamsted Research Rothamsted Research, previously known as the Rothamsted Experimental Station and then the Institute of Arable Crops Research, is one of the oldest agricultural experiment station, agricultural research institutions in the world, having been founde ...

as a Senior Scientific Officer, before studying an MA in

Museology Museology (also called museum studies or museum science) is the study of museums. It explores the history of museums and their role in society, as well as the activities they engage in, including curating, preservation, public programming, and ed ...

back at UEA, graduating in 2008. During her Masters she worked as Assistant Curator at

Norfolk Museums Service Norfolk Museums Service (NMS), formerly Norfolk Museums and Archaeology Service (NMAS), is a county-wide museums service that presides over ten museums in Norfolk, operated by Norfolk County Council and headed by the council's Director of Cultur ...

and then moved to the

Horniman Museum The Horniman Museum and Gardens is a museum in Forest Hill, London, England. Commissioned in 1898, it opened in 1901 and was designed by Charles Harrison Townsend in the Modern Style. It has displays of anthropology, natural history and music ...

, in 2010 she moved to the

where she is Senior curator of

Carabidae Ground beetles are a large, cosmopolitan family of beetles, the Carabidae, with more than 40,000 species worldwide, around 2,000 of which are found in North America and 2,700 in Europe. As of 2015, it is one of the 10 most species-rich animal ...

Cleroidea Cleroidea is a small Taxonomic rank, superfamily of beetles containing over 10,000 species. Most of the members of the group are somewhat slender, often with fairly soft, flexible elytra, and typically hairy or scaly. Description Cleroidea is ...

Myxophaga Myxophaga is the second-smallest suborder of the Coleoptera after Archostemata, consisting of roughly 65 species of small to minute beetles in four families. The members of this suborder are aquatic and semiaquatic, and feed on algae. Descript ...

and

Archostemata The Archostemata are the smallest suborder of beetles, consisting of 50 living species in five families and over 200 described fossil species. They are an ancient lineage with a number of primitive characteristics. Antenna (biology), Antennae may ...

Research

Garner researched

crop protection Pest control is the regulation or management of a species defined as a pest; such as any animal, plant or fungus that impacts adversely on human activities or environment. The human response depends on the importance of the damage done and wi ...

and

biodiversity Biodiversity is the variability of life, life on Earth. It can be measured on various levels. There is for example genetic variability, species diversity, ecosystem diversity and Phylogenetics, phylogenetic diversity. Diversity is not distribut ...

agroecosystems Agroecosystems are the ecosystems supporting the food production systems in farms and gardens. As the name implies, at the core of an agroecosystem lies the human activity of agriculture. As such they are the basic unit of study in Agroecology, and ...

during her time at Rothamsted. Her work included the two-spotted spider mite, ''Tetranychus urticae'', aphid controls on sugar beet crops and she also was part of a large project looking at invertebrate responses to

genetically modified Genetic engineering, also called genetic modification or genetic manipulation, is the modification and manipulation of an organism's genes using technology. It is a set of technologies used to change the genetic makeup of cells, including th ...

herbicide-tolerant crops. As a museum curator she has collaborated on many publications relating to specimens in the NHM collection, including a guide on how to conserve insect specimens affected by verdigris, a problematic substance that develops on entomological pins underneath specimens;

checkered beetle Cleridae are a family of beetles of the superfamily Cleroidea. They are commonly known as checkered beetles. The family Cleridae has a worldwide distribution, and a variety of habitats and feeding preferences. Cleridae have many niches and fee ...

s and a review of the taxonomic history of pelidnotine scarabs. In 2019 she was involved in work to help automate the identification of insects using imaging, testing a

convolutional neural network A convolutional neural network (CNN) is a type of feedforward neural network that learns features via filter (or kernel) optimization. This type of deep learning network has been applied to process and make predictions from many different ty ...

to classify images of insect specimens. She co-edited the

Royal Entomological Society The Royal Entomological Society is a learned society devoted to the study of insects. It aims to disseminate information about insects and to improve communication between entomologists. The society was founded in 1833 as the Entomological S ...

identification handbook ''Coleoptera Larvae'' with

Max Barclay Maxwell V L Barclay FRES is a British entomologist, and Curator and Collections Manager of Coleoptera and Hemiptera at the Natural History Museum in London. He is a Fellow of the Royal Entomological Society, and a member of the editorial board o ...

in 2019, it details the morphology of beetle

larvae A larva (; : larvae ) is a distinct juvenile form many animals undergo before metamorphosis into their next life stage. Animals with indirect developmental biology, development such as insects, some arachnids, amphibians, or cnidarians typical ...

in the British Isles and includes

dichotomous keys In phylogenetics, a single-access key (also called dichotomous key, sequential key, analytical key, or pathway key) is an identification key where the sequence and structure of identification steps is fixed by the author of the key. At each point i ...

to help identify the taxonomic family or subfamily of a larval specimen. Garner's thesis is on the 'Systematics and biogeography of

Lebiinae Lebiinae is a subfamily of ground beetles in the family Carabidae Ground beetles are a large, cosmopolitan family of beetles, the Carabidae, with more than 40,000 species worldwide, around 2,000 of which are found in North America and 2,700 ...

: Carabidae: Coleoptera' at

Imperial College London Imperial College London, also known as Imperial, is a Public university, public research university in London, England. Its history began with Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, Prince Albert, husband of Queen Victoria, who envisioned a Al ...

and the Natural History Museum, in the lab of Alfried Vogler and she was also co-supervised by the late

Terry Erwin Terry Lee Erwin (December 1, 1940 – May 11, 2020) was an American entomologist with the Smithsonian Institution. Erwin went to Vallejo High School and then graduated in biology in 1964, followed by a masters in 1966 from San Jose State Colle ...

. She has worked on a taxonomic revision of the Carabid beetle genus '' Plochionus'', which are beetles that hunt tent-caterpillars, she has also been involved in re-finding the

type specimens In biology, a type is a particular specimen (or in some cases a group of specimens) of an organism to which the scientific name of that organism is formally associated. In other words, a type is an example that serves to anchor or centralizes t ...

of ''Carabus pallens'', and has helped to develop rapid biodiversity assessments of tropical rainforest canopy fogging samples, using imaging to identify

morphospecies A species () is often defined as the largest group of organisms in which any two individuals of the appropriate sexes or mating types can produce fertile offspring, typically by sexual reproduction. It is the basic unit of classification and ...

before

molecular sequencing In genetics and biochemistry, sequencing means to determine the primary structure (sometimes incorrectly called the primary sequence) of an unbranched biopolymer. Sequencing results in a symbolic linear depiction known as a sequence which succi ...

, resulting in a larger diversity of species in the ''

Agra Agra ( ) is a city on the banks of the Yamuna river in the Indian state of Uttar Pradesh, about south-east of the national capital Delhi and 330 km west of the state capital Lucknow. With a population of roughly 1.6 million, Agra is the ...

'' genus of Carabid beetles than previously recorded.

Public activities

Garner is an advocate for the need for more women in entomology and support for them, particularly in countries with limited funding for science; in 2009 she was interviewed as part of a project about women in science by teacher and writer Alom Shaha. In 2014 she gave a talk for Ada Lovelace Day highlighting the victorian entomologist Evelyn Cheesman. She expanded on Cheesman's career in interviews for the NHM website and the ''

Daily Telegraph ''The Daily Telegraph'', known online and elsewhere as ''The Telegraph'', is a British daily broadsheet conservative newspaper published in London by Telegraph Media Group and distributed in the United Kingdom and internationally. It was foun ...

''; in 2015 she presented

BBC Radio BBC Radio is an operational business division and service of the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) which has operated in the United Kingdom under the terms of a royal charter since 1927. The service provides national radio stations cove ...

4 programme on Cheesman, as part of the Natural History Heroes series. In 2019 she co-wrote a paper about Cheesman's career and contributions to science In 2015 Garner talked with

David Baddiel David Lionel Baddiel (; born 28 May 1964) is an English comedian, presenter, screenwriter, author and singer. He became known for his early work alongside Rob Newman in '' The Mary Whitehouse Experience'' and later for his comedy partnership w ...

on BBC Radio 4's

Today programme ''Today'', colloquially known as ''the Today programme'', is BBC Radio 4's long-running morning news and current-affairs radio programme. Broadcast on Monday to Saturday from 06:00 to 09:00 (starting on Saturday at 07:00), it is produced by BB ...

about the type of insect that Gregor Samsa transforms into in Franz Kafka's 1915 novella ''

Metamorphosis Metamorphosis is a biological process by which an animal physically develops including birth transformation or hatching, involving a conspicuous and relatively abrupt change in the animal's body structure through cell growth and different ...

''. Later in 2015 she was interviewed on the Breaking Bio podcast, where she talked about the NHM beetle collections, and challenges that women face doing fieldwork. In 2021 she gave an online talk about Beetles as part of the NHM's Nature Live series.

Honours and awards

Garner is a Trustee of the Panama Wildlife Conservation Charity, Council member of the Systematics Association, Fellow of the Royal Entomological Society, Chairperson of ColSoc: The Coleopterists Society of Britain and Ireland and President of the Amateur Entomologists' Society.

References

External links

Natural History Museum London profile

{{DEFAULTSORT:Garner, Beulah Living people Year of birth missing (living people) British entomologists Fellows of the Royal Entomological Society British women entomologists Alumni of the University of East Anglia Employees of the Natural History Museum, London 21st-century British scientists 21st-century British women scientists