Order of Insects: Insect Species from Jan Swammerdam to August Johann Roesel von Rosenhof
In
the seventeenth century European naturalists took a new interest in the study
of insects. Late Renaissance works on hemimetabolous and holometabolous insects
divided them into kinds based on the morphology of each life stage; for
instance, Ulisse Aldrovandi’s De animalibus insectis (1602) treated caterpillars
and adult butterflies as distinct insect groups, even though he was aware that
the former metamorphosed into the latter. Late seventeenth- and early
eighteenth-century naturalists, on the other hand, developed a new diachronic
concept of insect species, using differences in metamorphosis to define
higher-level taxa. At the same time they were increasingly aware of the vast
diversity of insect species. This paper explores attempts to produce insect
taxonomies that made sense of both development and diversity from the work of
Jan Swammerdam (1637-1680) to that of August Johann Roesel von Rosenhof
(1705-1759).
