Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: TUESDAY, February 12, 1991                   TAG: 9102120384
SECTION: VIRGINIA                    PAGE: B1   EDITION: STATE 
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

TECH ENTOMOLOGIST CREATES A FLAP OVER STATE INSECT BILL

They squared off in 1976 when the Senate chose the tiger swallowtail butterfly as the state insect and the House chose the praying mantis. The deadlock closed the issue.

This month, the bill designating the swallowtail passed in the House by a 94-7 margin.

Entomologist Michael Kosztarab testified on behalf of the butterfly in 1976 and plans to attend a Senate General Laws Committee hearing on the House bill Wednesday afternoon.

Kosztarab and the Virginia Federation of Garden Clubs are concerned that conservative legislators are waiting with an amendment to replace their beloved insect with the mantis.

The bill's sponsor, Del. George Grayson, D-Williamsburg, said he's confident that if the amendment surfaces, "the garden club will swat it down." The mantis, Grayson said Monday, "is ugly compared with the beautiful orange-spotted butterfly."

Kosztarab believes choosing the mantis as the state insect would be like making Japanese kudzu the state plant.

Only one of the four species of mantis found in Virginia is native to the state - the Carolina mantis. And he said that choice would be an object of ridicule by the neighbors to the South. The others were introduced from Asia and Europe.

There's another irritating thing about the slender, green insect that gets its name because its spiny forelegs are often held up together as if praying: "The poor, smaller males are often eaten by the much larger females after they mate," he said.

Kosztarab, founding director of the Virginia Museum of Natural History's branch at the university, counters the argument that the mantis is valuable because it eats pests.

"It will eat anything it can grab, including beneficial insects like the honey bee," he said.

Kosztarab has a net full of arguments for designating the tiger swallowtail, a graceful butterfly with orange-spotted yellow wings striped with blue and black.

Virginia already has a state bird, the cardinal, and a state flower, the dogwood. And, he said, there are 10 times as many species of insects living in the state as there are plants and animals combined.

The tiger swallowtail is found all over the state from April through October and was the first insect to be scientifically described from North America, Kosztarab said.

Specimens were taken to a renowned biologist from Sweden who gave it the Latin name papilio glaucus in the mid-1700s.

The swallowtail has practical value because it pollinates plants and educational value because it represents the fragility of the state's environment, he said. Nine butterflies are on the state's endangered species list.

"Designating a state insect is an educational effort to get people to appreciate more what we have in Virginia, our natural resources, and the problem we have with pollution" Kosztarab said. "Here we have this beautiful creature affected . . . by man's intrusion."