[music] This is the story of the tiny rove beetle — a little-studied insect that mimics ants and termites to live in and prey on their colonies undetected — and a boy, Joe Parker, who turned a childhood passion into a scientific quest to understand the extraordinary evolutionary journey of these beetles. Parker discovered the world of insects and the rove beetle at a very young age. “I have been really interested in insects since I was a small child. All of the rest of the world fell away, and it was just me and insects.” The beetles — beautiful under a microscope — are common in Wales, where he grew up. But it’s the way some species have evolved that made Parker commit his life’s work to the insects. Here’s how it went. Ancestral rove beetles entered colonies to prey on ants or termites using their chemical gland for defense. The approach was classic — enter, attack, escape. But over time, some beetle species evolved a sneakier approach. They began to live in the colonies, masquerading as termites or ants. “If you can get your foot in the door of an ant colony, there are no other predators. It’s climatically controlled. It’s full of resources, so you can feed on the ant brood and food that the ants have harvested to your heart’s content.” What allowed the beetles to survive in the ant colonies were major evolutionary changes in body and behavior. The defensive gland at the end of the abdomen evolved to produce chemicals that made the beetles smell like colony members. Instead of harming the ants, they tricked them. In some cases, the ants were even drawn to the smell. And their bodies were transformed. Legs and antennae grew longer. Their abdomen slimmed. The result — they came to resemble the ants. Even more surprising is that this wasn’t a single event passed on from one ancestral line. It happened many times. Over millions of years, at least 12 separate lineages of rove beetles have independently gone through the same transformation, from a free-roaming solitary beetle to a social insect living with ants or termites. The big question is what genetic changes caused these transformations, and this is the part that really excites Parker. “There’s clearly something special about these beetles compared to almost all other forms of animal life that kind of poises them, predisposes them evolutionarily to be able to do this.” He now has his sights set on mapping and comparing the genes of many rove beetle species. The research could provide some deep insights into the nature of evolution — the process that has made both beetles and humans who we are today. And it all started with a childhood passion. [music]