Maria Sibylla Merian

Maria Sibylla Merian raised and observed insects directly through their full life cycles at a time when many naturalists still believed insects sprang from spontaneous generation. Her 1705 book Metamorphosis Insectorum Surinamensium, based on two years of fieldwork in Suriname, paired each insect with the specific plant it fed on across sixty engraved plates, and that pairing of organism and habitat anticipated the ecological relationships the field named a century and a half later.