It's hard to imagine but just 300 years ago,
it was widely believed that insects spontaneously spawned
from dust, mud or rotten meat.
Their reproduction was felt to be so strange and frightening,
they were known as beasts of the devil.
It's partly thanks to the work of naturalist and illustrator,
Maria Sibylla Merian,
that we can now find this idea amusing.
Today Merian is celebrated as one of the world's first ecologists.
She is admired by Sir David Attenborough,
who described her as one of the most significant contributors
to entomology, the study of insects.
But she faced many challenges in her journey to educate the world,
not least because of her sex.
Born into a family of artists in Frankfurt in 1647,
Merian spent her childhood collecting insects
and drawing them in remarkable detail.
In 1665, she married and soon had two daughters.
In an age where a woman's place was thought to be in the home,
she defied convention,
publishing her first book, New Book of Flowers, in 1675.
Merian was one of the first to describe
the metamorphosis of insects in detail,
declaring that all moths and butterflies
hatch from eggs after reproduction and do not just magically appear.
In 1699, Merian, by then divorced,
sold her belongings and set sail to Suriname in South America
with one of her daughters, Dorothea.
She's thought to be the first woman to travel in the name of science.
After a long sea journey, they set off into the jungle,
battling through thick clouds of black flies
that inflicted skin-ripping bites - but it was worth it.
The jungles of Suriname were a naturalists' paradise,
teeming with species that would later be documented
in Merian's groundbreaking work,
'The Metamorphosis of the Insects of Suriname', published in 1705.
Its stunning illustrations depicted stages of development of Suriname's
veracious caterpillars and vibrant butterflies,
as well as many other creatures from this exotic habitat.
Uniquely for the time, she also portrayed insects surrounded
by the plants they relied on,
revealing their relationship to the wider ecosystem.
She was the first to show that the change from caterpillar to butterfly
depended on a number of plants.
Though she had planned to stay longer,
Merian's adventure was cut short by illness
and after two years she returned to Amsterdam.
Given the challenges of working in a humid and unfamiliar environment,
it is remarkable how many species she was able to observe
and catalogue in that time.
Her writing is also notable for acknowledging the mistreatment
of enslaved indigenous and African people
and their contribution to her research.
She wrote in her description of the peacock flower,
'The Indians, who are not treated well by their Dutch masters,
use the seeds to abort their children,
so that they will not become slaves like themselves.'
Merian suffered a stroke in 1715 that left her unable to work.
She died two years later, aged 69.
However, Merian's legacy has endured.
To date, at least six plants, nine butterflies, two bugs,
a spider and a lizard, have been named after her.
Despite being over 300 years old, her work on the biodiversity
of Suriname is still valued by scientists
and could show us how some species may adapt to climate change.