NC State University Insect Museum

After much soul-searching we've decided to move our blog (well, at least all subsequent posts) to our own server at the Museum and to a new URL: http://blog.insectmuseum.org/. We'll continue to monitor this piece of our history, and we'll answer/respond to any questions/comments posted on these pages.

Wolfblogs was a great run, and I tip my hat to the hardworking folks here at the NCSU Libraries. It can't be easy steering this massive ship through the Web!

• Here is the new RSS feed.
• I also made a new Insect Museum RSS widget for OSX that harvests the new RSS.

We've lined up a series of new posts for the new year, which promises to be an active one here at the Museum!

Well, much to our surprise the new insect drawers arrived yesterday - SIX PALLETS OF THEM. Wow. If you need the name of a good drawer vendor just - *cough*Padgett*cough* - let me know. The rearrangement of specimens and integration of new storage space seemed to have happened overnight (thanks Bob!), before I even had a chance to describe what we're doing in the Museum. I'll likely queue some posts for after the holidays, when I have more time to spray about some of this awesomeness.

If I were to create a top 10 list of missed opportunities in 2009 this event would almost certainly make it: Ugly bug contest 2009. And, based on the comments posted at Scientific American's podcast/blog, I am not alone. How does this kind of misinformed outreach effort deliver entomological enlightenment to those people who thirst for knowledge about arthropods? Does the "there's no such thing as bad press" philosophy reign here?

Denigrating insect species, broadly labeled here as bugs (though only one species belongs in Heteroptera - yes, it matters) does a disservice to those of us who fight daily to convince a skeptical public (and even some biologists - ask me off the record) that insects deserve to be respected, researched, and even revered. Let's take a quick look at their "ugly bug" finalists:

1. Macrosiphon (Hemiptera: Aphididae) - an aphid
2. Xylocopa (Hymenoptera: Apidae) - a carpenter bee
3. Periplanta americana [sic! see comments below] (Dictyoptera: Blattidae) - the American cockroach (which is not native to America!)
4. Acanthocephala (Hemiptera: Coreidae) - a leaf-footed bug
5. Tipulidae (Diptera) - a crane fly
6. Apis mellifera (Hymenoptera: Apidae) - the honey bee
7. Harpegnathos (Hymenoptera: Formicidae) - an ant
8. Polistes (Hymenoptera: Vespidae) - a paper wasp
9. Hadrurus (Scorpiones: Iuridae) - a scorpion
10. Agulla (Raphidioptera: Raphidiidae) - a snakefly

Really? Do we really want to list two bee species as candidates for ugliest insect? Many bee species are noted to be declining, and we should be pushing an agenda that highlights this issue and motivates work towards a resolution - not contributing to the attitude that these species can be avoided, sprayed, or ignored. And what about the American cockroach (Periplaneta americana) - the perennial easy target? Why can't we finally celebrate all the good that has come from cockroach research, like a deeper understanding of sociality, physiology, symbiosis, morphology (e.g., their service as models for entomologists-in-training), locomotion and biomimetics?

One could also use the fact that an institute dedicated to species exploration cannot even ascribe species names to most of these specimens - which is a real and pervasive problem for insect researchers. The crane fly couldn't even be determined below family! Why not build an outreach project that emphasizes this vast diversity (especially crane flies!) and the chronic problem of taxonomic identification? Inspire some bright-eyed kids to take up the reigns in overcoming this predicament! I can think of at least 10 cool things to say about each of those arthropods listed above, and I bet that with very little effort we could build a fun citizen science project focused on each one, or write a small narrative, or animate a cartoon, ... you name it. Instead these species are cast abominations. Which one is ugliest? The idea itself wins that title.

The winner of the Unusual/Extreme/Close-up of Insect, Arthropod, or other Invertebrate category also won the coveted Best in Show. Congratulations to John Meyer for capturing this beautiful and bewildering shot!

photographer: John Meyer
title: Wheel of Fortune

photographer: Daniel Kronauer
title: I wish I was somebody else. San Carlos de Rio Negro, Venezuela.

Daniel Kronauer's (Cambridge, MA) photo won for best image of an immature insect or arthropod. The photographer's statement about this photograph: Ants are ecologically dominant in tropical ecosystems and generally well defended. Many other arthropods therefore commonly mimic ants. For example, it is not uncommon to find one or more ant-mimicking jumping spiders for each of the most common ant species at any Amazonian site. This picture was taken while I was photographing Camponotus carpenter ants that were foraging on the same plant. It certainly took a second look to notice that this bug was not part of the ant family.

Thanks for sharing your images with us, and congratulations on placing first in this category!