Athol McLachlan obituary

Zoologist whose studies of midges showed how the smalles males can achieve disproportionate success in mating swarmsAll his working life, the zoologist Athol McLachlan, who has died aged 86, was fascinated by chironomid midges, tiny, non-biting flies that spend most of their lives as aquatic larvae before emerging briefly as adults. His work on these unassuming little insects, in habitats ranging from rock pools on the Zomba plateau in Malawi to mating swarms beside British hedgerows, produced elegant insights into how natural selection adapts organisms to the most fleeting of environments.His interest in chironomid midges was sparked in the 1960s during his doctoral research on the insects of Lake Kariba in Zimbabwe, then Rhodesia.