How Invertebrates Changed the World Quiz

Answer: Benjamin Disraeli

During the Irish potato famine, over one million people died of starvation, and another million were forced to emigrate to find work and food. In total, the population of Ireland dropped by between 20 and 25% during the 1840s. Historians agree that the Great Famine changed the social, political and economic situations in Ireland massively, and altered forever the course of its history.
Phytophthora infestans is sometimes called 'early blight' and is thus distinguished from a similar disease 'late blight'. As well as potatoes it can also infect tomatoes. The first Irish potato crop failure due to this disease came in 1845, and the Highlands followed in 1846.
Outside of Ireland, the entire European death toll due to the failures of the potato crops during the 1840s was 100,000 people. Ten times that number died in Ireland.

Answer: Justinian

Justinian reigned for over forty years, and tried to restore the splendour and power of the ancient Roman Empire during this time. In 552, it is recorded that some monks brought silk worm eggs out of China, which hatched successfully and founded the Italian silk industry. These monks risked their lives to get the eggs as the Chinese government had declared it a capital offence to take eggs or silk worms out of China.
The raising and harvesting of silk from silkworms is known as sericulture.

Answer: Robert I

Robert the Bruce reigned as King Robert I of Scotland from 1306 until 1329. The spider story about his escape from his enemies was first told by Sir Walter Scott, in his book "Tales of a Grandfather" (1828), and is based on many similar legends told on the theme of "if at first you don't succeed...try, try again".

Answer: The Pope founded a seat of learning at Heidelberg

Among the things which the Concordat of Worms treaty did establish was the election of Bishops within the German Kingdom by a conclave of Canons rather than their appointment by the Holy Roman Emperor, although the Emperor retained the right to be present and still had some influence on the process.
It also made provision for the return of all the regalia and possessions previously owned by the Papacy that had been taken over the centuries by various Holy Roman Emperors, and the removal of simony (bribes) from the process of creating Bishops and other clergy.
At the time it was written, the language of the Concordat was created deliberately vague and ambiguous, so many of the issues were not truly resolved. This meant that with the rise of Protestantism, the 1648 Treaty of Westphalia was necessary. This treaty defined the powers and duties of the Pope and the states of Europe, both Protestant and Catholic, in much clearer terms than Worms did, although the emphasis was much more on the secular than the sacred with Westphalia.

The famous University of Heidelberg was not founded until 1386, and was created by Rupert I, Elector Palatine of the Holy Roman Empire.

With many thanks to Mike (mjws1968) for his help with this question.

Answer: The spread of domesticated cattle

This tiny creature carries trypanosomiasis or sleeping sickness, which is a serious disease in humans. Even today, treatment is difficult and very painful, and not widely available to the majority of African sufferers; in the past there was no known treatment at all. In 2009, there were approximately 75,000 cases of sleeping sickness in humans recorded by the World Health Organisation.
The bite of the tsetse can also infect cattle, and up to 3 million beasts a year have been recorded as dying, with total financial losses running to over a billion US dollars.
The tsetse belt across continental Africa stopped cattle spreading rapidly right across Africa with the various European settlers, and stopped them, and some cattle herding tribes like the Masai, from wiping out each other, and indigenous wildlife, in a never ending quest for grazing land for the herds.

Answer: Boll weevil

Perhaps surprisingly, it is the boll weevil that the citizens of Enterprise chose to honour. These weevils have caused billions of dollars worth of damage to cotton crops over the years, with knock on effects on employment, land ownership, and so on. The people of Enterprise chose to look on the bright side so to speak, and appreciate being forced to diversify and expand their industries and farming techniques to adapt and make livings after the weevils wiped out the staple crop.

Answer: True

Many scholars and historians have worked on finding possible causes for the various ills which were visited on Egypt around the year 1260 BC, and their explanations are widely accepted as correct. Thus the first plague, the "rivers of blood", is thought to have been caused by a massive algal bloom of the poisonous dinoflagellate Physteria. This killed the fish, and made the water turn red and toxic.

The third plague, "lice", arose because the toxic water killed the amphibians that would have eaten them, so the insect population went unchecked. The same conditions applied to the fourth plague, "flies". Studies at the USDA animal research centre showed that the fifth plague "a plague on livestock", was likely to have been a bacterial infection carried by midges known as 'coolacoidees', which were also put forward as a candidate for the lice of the third plague. The sixth plague, "boils", could also well have been a bacterial infection transmitted by stable flies. Plague eight was 'just' a "plague of locusts".

The tenth and final plague, "death of the Egyptian firstborn sons" could have been caused by the social conventions of the time conspiring to ensure that first born sons from the better off families (i.e. Egyptians in comparison to Hebrew slave labourers) receiving a lethal dose of a mould spore infection arising from locust droppings in the stored grain crop. Thus seven out of ten Great Plagues can be attributed, in whole or in part, to invertebrates.

The enslaving of the Hebrew nation during the reign of Pharoah Rameses II may or may not be a historical fact, but whether one believes the plagues were sent from God to free the people, happened as scholars have described, or a mixture of both, is very much a personal matter.

Answer: Nicander

Nicander's surviving works include poetic treatises on the treatment of poisons and venomous animal bites. Colophon was in what is now Turkey, and many of the male members of Nicander's family were priests at the Temple of Apollo there. The most widely used leeches in medicine belong to the genus Hirudo, with Hirudo medicinalis being the most common. Nowadays they are used in microsurgical procedures and by plastic surgeons after delicate reconstructional operations such as reattaching a finger.

The correct term for leech therapy is hirudotherapy. Helminthic therapy is the term used when any one of various worms is used to treat medical conditions.

Answer: N. Charles Rothschild

Charles and his older brother Walter spent large amounts of their family fortune on their zoological and entomological collections. They were both passionate about nature and conservation, well before it became fashionable to be "green", and some of their collections are now in the Natural History Museum in London. Charles left his world famous butterfly collection to Harrow School; his family have said this was unexpected as Charles was very unhappy during his time there. Xenopsylla cheopis is commonly known as the Oriental or tropical rat flea, and can carry both bubonic plague and typhus, which it passes on via its bite.

Answer: Henry I

Henry I was in Normandy at the time of his death, visiting his daughter and her children. After his death, his daughter Matilda and nephew Stephen both laid claim to the English throne and civil war ensued. This war lasted almost 20 years, with devasting social and economic effects for the English, and some 'knock-on' effects in Europe too. Those lampreys could be said to have caused a great deal of damage, as if Henry had lived longer, the line of succession may well have been clearer when he did die, and civil war avoided.

NB: - My "Speech for the Defence" ;-)
Although possibly a "bit of a stretch" for a quiz on invertebrates, lampreys are technically cartilaginous not bony, and are classified as petromyzontida, a sort of adjunct to Vertebratae. That's my excuse and I am sticking to it anyway!