Growing up in Mississippi, did you dream you’d become an entomologist?
Never. I wanted to be a cowgirl. I was given an Annie Oakley rifle. Mississippi women all know how to shoot.

You’ve studied everything from spider mites to ticks.
Mites are everywhere on the planet, from Antarctica to the bottom of the Marianas Trench. They are extremely important economically in the tropics. The ones I worked on sucked the cell contents out of plants and sometimes caused the plants to die. So they can cause economic damage.

One of the first things I worked on was how these little guys looked to be fighting to death over females. It was hugely interesting to watch. They’d spear each other with their mouthparts and fling silk on each other.

My second husband was the director of the acarology lab at Ohio State. I got involved in it and ended up publishing a book and collection of articles on sex ratio in mites, ticks, and insects. Human babies have a 50/50 ratio of boys to girls. But for a lot of mites, there are more females than males. We really knocked this subject into the ground with enthusiasm and insight.

Tell us about having a family and a species of mites named for you.
In the world of mites, you can’t get any better than that. The new family named after me is Philodanidae, and it has just one species, Philodana johnstoni, so it’s very unusual and a triple high honor: family, genus, and species. I have to tell you, that’s a fat, hairy mite. But I think she’s beautiful.

Has your field changed during the 40 years you’ve been at Ohio State?
With the rate of increase in knowledge in biology, nobody can keep it all in their heads, so specialization has run amok. The idea of a generalist who is wise in many ways of biology is hard to find. Nobody is being trained to take their place because there is no demand. People want junior scientists who can get research grants as opposed to wise scholars who can think comparatively.

You received the Alumni Association’s 2007 Josephine Failer Award for volunteer service to students.
That was a high honor, and I was really elated.

The one thing I’ve invested in, in recent years, is the Student-Alumni Council. I’m on the selection committee for new members, am a judge on a panel that chooses the Homecoming court, and do scholarship interviews and all sorts of other student services.

During the interview for the Homecoming court, some of the questions are formulaic. But I also ask questions out of the blue to see what kind of imagination and poise the candidates have. I really get a kick out of it.

I give my time to the undergrads doing whatever they ask me. I pretty much never say no.