Cockroach Zone: AU Entomologist Finds Disgusting Pests Quite Fascinating

By: Jamie Creamer

For most folks , the mere sight of a cockroach is enough to make the skin crawl.

But for Arthur Appel, hordes of the revolting insects are just all in a day's work.

Appel, AU alumni professor of entomology and an Alabama Agricultural Experiment Station researcher, is an urban entomologist who has spent 25 years studying cockroaches. In his lab in Funchess Hall, he's got an unenviable collection to show for it: Hundreds of thousands of 25 different species of cockroaches, scurrying all over each other in 32-gallon trash cans and waving their antennae at you from gallon jars on shelves.

“It's pretty disgusting, all right, but it's what I do,” Appel says. “Part of my job is to figure out better ways to control cockroaches, and like it or not, that means I have to work with these guys.”

His is a wide-open field: He's one of only a half dozen scientists in the U.S. for whom cockroaches are a research focus.

Appel's research objective is primarily to develop and validate techniques and products for managing and controlling the disgusting pests—he's currently having success with mint oil and other natural oils as a repellent—and to study their biology and physiology, which in and of itself is a mesmerizing field.

(Did you have a clue, for instance, that some roaches can hold their breath for up to one hour? Or that, when you raise your foot to stomp one and he takes off, it isn't because he sees your foot but because he senses the change in air pressure your foot motion causes? See how amazing they are?)

Appel's fascination with cockroaches and other urban pests didn't manifest itself in toddlerhood, or anything dramatic like that. In fact, growing up in Los Angeles, Appel had what he considers merely a typical childhood curiosity about the insect world.

“Sure, I pinned bugs and had an insect collection, and I did have a pet praying mantis for a while,” Appel says. “But certainly, insects were no all-consuming passion.”

He developed something closely akin to that in the late 1970s, though, when he was an undergraduate at the University of California, Los Angeles. A general biology major, he took an entomology class taught by internationally recognized mosquito taxonomist John Belkin. That class set the course for his career as an entomologist.

“Dr. Belkin was a brilliant teacher,” Appel says. “He made the subject absolutely come alive. It was fascinating. I was hooked.”

The real clincher, and the special bent toward cockroaches, came a few semesters later, in a parasitology class taught by another riveting professor. Appel did a project on cockroach parasites and turned in a paper on his work. The professor handed the paper back with a few marks and the note, “Revise and submit to Journal of Parasitology.”

“For an undergraduate to have the chance to have a paper published in a professional journal, that was awesome,” Appel recalls. “From then on, I guess you could say that cockroaches became ‘my thing.'”

After earning his bachelor's degree in biology—along with a minor in philosophy—Appel entered the University of California, Riverside, where he received his master's and his doctoral degrees in urban entomology. That's the study of insects that affect people and their property, as opposed to agricultural entomology, which deals with crop pests.

In 1985, with degrees in hand, he left the West Coast and headed for the sunny South, where he had landed a position as assistant professor of entomology at Auburn.

His excellence as a teacher and as a researcher carried him up the career ladder quickly.

Five years after arriving at AU, he was made associate professor; in 1997, he earned full professorship; and in 2001, in recognition of his outstanding and exceptional contributions to the university's academic programs, he was named one of five alumni professors by the Auburn Alumni Association. That distinction runs through 2006.

In the classroom, whether in undergraduate classes where he is a frequent guest lecturer or in one of his graduate-level urban entomology courses, the upbeat and energetic Appel's goal is to get his students pumped up about entomology.

“I try to emulate those excellent professors I had—I'm still striving to be that good—and I try to get across my personal fascination with and my real curiosity about insects,” Appel says.

“Don't tell anybody, he says, “but I just enjoy the heck out of what I do.”

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