David Rentz
David Rentz is an Australian entomologist and the second author of the 1983 note on jewel beetles that tried to mate with discarded beer bottles. The vault holds little else about him, and this page is short for that reason.
Who they are
Press coverage of the 2011 Ig Nobel Prizes calls him the Australian colleague of Darryl Gwynne of the University of Toronto Mississauga. The two made the observations during fieldwork in Western Australia and published them in the Australian Journal of Entomology in 1983, in a note of two pages. The pair received an Ig Nobel Prize in 2011 for the work.
Nothing about Rentz's career, institution or other publications has been verified for this page, and none is claimed.
Key papers
Gwynne, D. T., & Rentz, D. C. F. (1983). Beetles on the bottle: Male buprestids mistake stubbies for females (Coleoptera). Australian Journal of Entomology, 22(1), 79-80. doi:10.1111/j.1440-6055.1983.tb01846.x.
Key ideas
The note reports male jewel beetles of the species Julodimorpha bakewelli attempting to mate with brown beer bottles. It is used on this site as a field case with the same structure as the herring gull chick experiments.
Sources
- ScienceDaily, 29 September 2011, report on the Ig Nobel Prize for the beetle and beer bottle study. The paper's record, checked through Crossref.