Spineless Sushi

     I am the new Collection Manager in the Department of Recent Invertebrates.  I am loving my job; it has been keeping me so busy that I've just now made the time to get my first post in.  After a long day, or week, I like to treat myself to sushi.  Sushi has become quite a happening food phenomenon.  As the interest has grown, more and more varieties of rolls have become available.  When I go to a new sushi restaurant I always like to try the rolls named after invertebrates, or that have invertebrate ingredients.

I am going to start with my personal favorite, the caterpillar roll.  There are some variations in the ingredients, but they always have eel on the inside and avocado on the outer top.  The eel sauce used to garnish the roll is what makes me want this roll every time I go for sushi.  It is sweet, with a mild tang.  There is no salty flavor to it, so it is a strong contrast to the flavor of soy sauce.




I really enjoy when the sushi chefs bring the caterpillar roll to life.  In the picture above, suckers from an octopus tentacle were used to give the appearance of eye, and sauce was used creatively to make antennae and legs.  Now, these are all anatomically incorrect, but I really appreciate the effort.

There are often variations on the caterpillar roll, where the eyes may be a
dash of spicy mayo (left image), there could be sesame seeds on top, or even roe (fish eggs, right image) used to decorate and add flavor.


My next favorite roll is the spider roll.  Here, the entire soft shell crab is battered, fried, and included whole in the roll.  The "soft shell" refers to when the crabs were harvested, not a particular kind of crab.  Crabs, like all arthropods, have a tough exoskeleton.  As crabs grow, they must shed their skin and develop a new one.  This process is called molting.  There is a short period of time after it molts where a crab is very soft, and this is when the crabs are harvested for a spider roll.  You can eat the entire crab, shell and all!  The mix of tempura crab and the soft shell give this roll a satisfying crunch.  My favorite pieces are the ends, because there is always some part of the crab sticking out!

Here you can see (left picture) the pincher poking out of the roll!  Yummy!

This spider roll (right picture, bottom right) was given the appearance of legs and antennae by creative use of the sauce.

I recently tried a grasshopper roll.  This looks a bit like a caterpillar roll with the avocado on the top, but it is quite different on the inside.  It had fried shrimp on the inside and some tangy barbecue sauce on the top that gave it a spicy kick!

The butterfly roll was very interesting because the ingredients changed half-way through "it's life" (ie, me eating it!).  It began with eel on top with a bit of seasoned mayo and a drizzle of eel sauce, and then morphed into salmon on top.  Throughout the inside was scallion.  This roll stood out for all the different flavor combinations at different sections of the roll.  The metamorphosis of flavors give the butterfly roll an apt name.

Last but not least, is my favorite roll, EVER: The double eel white roll.  While eels are vertebrates, I am including this because of the sauce artistry of what I interpret as an invertebrate.  This roll has white eel on the top and dark eel on the inside.  The sauce garnish was done in amazing fashion to kick it up a notch and keep me still thinking about this dish!  Fantastic!

So, what's next?  I have just found an interesting sushi restaurant, here in Norman, that has nigiri rolls (a small mound of rice with the meat laying on top) with sea urchin, mantis shrimp, sea prawn, octopus tentacle, saltwater clam and more!  I can't wait to try these next time!

New Contributer, New Stories!

Returning from a hiatus this summer and fall while trying to focus on grants and publication, we'll be posting more to the blog in the upcoming month to catch up on what has been going on in the collection and the museum. A few things first!

- Our new Collection Manager Andy Boring will be contributing to our blog in the future. His first upcoming post will be about the interface of sushi and insects. Didn't think they could mix? Neither did I, and I hope you're looking forward to his post as much as we are!

- We had a manuscript be accepted for publication that was based on the research with our Honors Research Assistantship Program student Jacob Mitchell this past fall/spring! The research was based on looking at distributions of velvet ants in Oklahoma, and finding species never found here before. We would not have known the two species below were state records until we were able to compile all the known records of these insects in our state, and it took a lot of work! We also found a county record for Johnston Co. from this year's BioBlitz at Camp Simpson, and are looking forward to getting it identified to see what species it is!

New state records: Dasymutilla foxi and Dasymutilla snoworum

- Andy and I will be at the Entomological Collections Network Annual Meeting and the Entomological Society of America Annual Meeting in Austin, Texas tomorrow through Wednesday, so we'll likely have posts about that as well.
   Have a great day, and get excited for Andy's next post!

Old scorpions, new tricks

    One of our efforts here at the museum is to take better care of our old material and specimens since it is our job to protect them for future generations. One way of preserving biological materials for several years (many or, in our case, decades) is to store them in alcohol. Back in the day, before there was pure distilled alcohol, specimens would be stored in "spirits" (a.k.a. moonshine, vodka, rum, etc.) because that was the highest grade they could get. Early scientists found that the high alcohol content helped prevent bacterial and fungal growth, thereby slowing decay. Now most specimens are stored in either lab-grade mixtures of ethanol (which is the alcohol found in beer/wine) or isopropyl (rubbing alcohol...mostly just fish now). In our collection of Recent Invertebrates, its 75% ethanol to 25% water. This keeps our specimens in relatively good shape but doesn't completely dry them out (most organisms are a large part water, and by osmosis when you put them in high alcohol content, the water goes out of them into the solution, drying them out). Here is a link of a nice exhibition featuring over a million specimens preserved in alcohol in Berlin, Germany, for an example of a large collection in alcohol.

Scorpions from the 1930s on the right being rehoused in new alcohol on the left.

    Water with osmosis is not the only thing that unfortunately leeches out of the specimens over time with alcohol. Many specimens loose their color, and alcohol soluble chemicals come out. That is why the jar on the right in the picture above is reddish/orange. The fats and other chemicals from the scorpion specimens and the wooden corks used to close the containers leached into the alcohol. And, that is at least 80 years of buildup, since some of the scorpions in that jar were collected in 1931! With the alcohol that color and the corks almost completely dissolved, we decided to give the scorpions a face-lift and replace the nasty alcohol with new, fresh alcohol so we could see the specimens and new cotton stoppers that could easily be removed to look at the specimens or change them out. Now we just have to catalog them, and the scorpions are ready to go for a researcher to study them!
      I hope everyone has a good weekend, and we'll update you more on the collection next week!

Lots o' bees!

   A few weeks ago I attended one of the Whitten-Newman ExplorOlogy programs out in Black Mesa, Oklahoma as a scientist representative. The program was called PaleoExpedition, and the main goal was having the students work with fossils and geology at the Whitten-Newman property in the area. My job as a recent-invertebrate curator and trained entomologist was to help teach the high-school age students about how current animal life can infer about the past, so part of the time they were there I led them on insect-based surveys and experiments in the area.
    One of the first observations we ran into when we arrived at Black Mesa was the massive nest site of Digger bees that were adjacent to the on-site campground being used by many of the paleontologists. They had never seen such a concentration of these bees, and neither had I. The Digger bees dug holes into the sandy soil to lay their nests, some as close as 1 inch apart from each other, and there had to be thousands of nests within a baseball-field area.

Piles of Digger-bee nests. Image by Nick Czaplewski. 

Close up of the nests, including the tunnels built extending from the nests. Image from Nick Czaplewski

     What was also interesting about the nests was some of the bees seemed to use nearby bright rocks, pieces of glass, or sticks to "mark" them. We used the bees and nests as an example of developing a question, creating a hypothesis, and testing the hypothesis with the students. One pair of students did a little survey of the nests to see what was the preferred type of object that they would use to mark nests, and found they generally preferred native rocks after all. Another group of students surveyed whether nests with the tubes on the top of the nests helped prevent velvet ants from entering the nests (they are parasites of the bees), and found it did help deter them. Lastly another group of students surveyed how many types of velvet ants were in the area attacking the bee nests, and found at least three species (all of which I think are county, if not state records!).
     It was interesting trying to tie-in paleontology with bug-hunting, but I think the students enjoyed an opportunity to work with live animal observations, field work, and developing their own experiments. I'm hoping to follow up with some of the students on projects from some of the observations and specimens we gathered from the sites, too. Who knows, maybe I converted a few into future entomologists!
    I'll be posting pictures of the bees and velvet ants shortly, and it was a great opportunity to work with the ExplorOlogy program!

Back with a Buzz

Hey Everyone! We've been on a bit of a blogging hiatus with our department, which is due to how busy our summer has been this year. One grant down, two manuscripts being finished, two ExplorOlogy trips completed with some fantastic kids, and soon to be two workshops in Gainesville, Florida and Ann Arbor, Michigan in August and September, respectively, mean a busy summer will continue ahead!
    We do have two new announcements for our department that we are really excited about: we have a new graduate student, Brent, who will be helping us with our shell accessions this year, and we hired a new full-time Collection Manager, Andy! Both will be starting in August, so we'll be able to accomplish even more in revitalizing our collection.
    Brent, who is doing research on mercury levels in freshwater mollusks here in Oklahoma, will help us with his mollusk knowledge to recurrate and incorporate two new collections into our main shell collection. We received two major donations recently: the Mathers collection of shells collected in the United States, and the Perry Yates Jackson collection of shells collected in the United States and across the world. We also will hopefully hire an undergraduate student to help him with the Jackson collection and gain some experience learning mollusk taxonomy and curation, so we'll have a dynamic duo tackling our bivalves and snails shortly! We're also hoping to write a bit more about these exciting donations this fall as we learn more about the snails and mollusks we're getting.

Cataloged and sorted shells from the Jackson Collection. Notice the care taken to get them identified!

     Andy has a PhD in the systematics of parasitic hymenoptera (wasps that lay eggs in other animals, mostly insects) and will be taking over a lot of the duties that are critical to our department, such as maintaining the collection, managing our staff and students, accessions and loan information, our departmental catalog and records, education activities...the list goes on and on! With his expertise in wasps and other insects he'll also be a huge asset to our collection, museum, and state as a resident expert for the group. Andy will also be helping us out with fieldwork and outreach events, especially Bioblitzes, so that we can have our taxonomic expertise available for Oklahomans. We're really looking forward to having him be a part of our team.
     So those are the big events that are coming up for next month. Next week, however, look for a post about our adventures with ExplorOlogy, and integrating Recent Invertebrates with learning about the scientific method!

Hiatus!

   Well, if you've been following our department blog you may have noticed we haven't posted anything for the last couple of weeks. We started out strong...but like a caterpillar munches on leaves and grows rapidly before taking a break with metamorphosis, we are in a quiet stasis mode before our next big change. The reasons? Lots!
   A.) We just closed the Exhibit Bugs Outside of the Box yesterday, which was one of the most successful exhibits we've had at the museum. The Opening was a great success in particular, thanks to all of the hard work of our volunteers, staff, and friends. It was a great run!

   B.) We've been really cranking along on cataloging our collection and accessions, including new donations of slides of Chironomidae flies thanks to Jan Hoover.

Chironomidae fly. Image from Wikipedia.com

A few weeks ago we also got a donation of over 2,000 or so slides of various aquatic insects and larvae from Lake Texoma as part of a survey by Dr. Gary Schnell, which need to be cataloged and accessioned. Its exciting to get all of this data, but cataloging the information is not the most exciting thing to write about. We did hit some important milestones, however. Thanks to Tamaki, Laura, and Jaime's help we've cataloged over 2,819 species of beetles in our collection...a great start for diversity represented for how small our collection is.
   C.) Our mollusk collection has moved! We had to move at least 12 cabinets to a new space so that we could incorporate the Mather shell accession into our collection. We keep growing! Having four women, three of which are under 5-5", move a hundred or so 15lb steel drawers filled with shell specimens is quite a task. Our team is a tough one!
   D.) 'Tis the season for...grant writing. The Sam Noble Museum has been very generous with our department, especially allowing us to expand our space by moving the mollusk collection. However, like most museums, major upgrades to collections and departments require outside funding to help cover the costs of revamping efforts. Our collection needs a major revamp with space and cabinets to keep pace with the accessions and quality standards we're facing, so we're working hard on writing grants this summer to see if we can make those changes possible.
      So, this summer we'll be a bit more sporadic with our updates as we write and catalog away, but don't worry, the next big thing for our department will on its way soon enough!

To Jump

    As I have mentioned in a previous post, spring is coming here in Oklahoma and several groups of insects are starting to come out. One of the more numerous groups of insects out there are the beetles (Coleoptera), and they are starting to creep out of their overwintering shelters or hatch out of their eggs for a brand new year!
    One of the beetles I saw starting to show up on campus here at the University of Oklahoma is a shiny green metallic and red flea beetle called Kuschelina gibbitarsa. It is part of a group of beetles called the flea beetles because they have a very strong "jumping" mechanism to get escape predators. If you look closely at these beetle's hind legs, you'll notice that the femora (longest parts of the leg, kind of like our femur) are really wide and "fat", because they have lots of muscles in there to help them push off into the air when threatened. These small to medium-sized beetles feed on plants, many beetles in fact feed on one or two types of plants only!

Examples of other types of flea beetles. Image by James Lindsey at Ecology of Commanster

      All flea beetles are part of the beetle tribe Alticini, named after the beetle genus Alticus. Altus in Latin means "high", which is in reference to their high jump. Other words that use "alt" like the Alticini are "altitude", "altimeter", etc. Actual fleas on the other hand, the Siphonaptera, do not get their name for their jumping but their siphon-like mouth parts and lack of wings (siphon+aptera, aptera meaning lack of wings). Fleas are much better jumpers than flea beetles (see a really neat article about flea jumping abilities here from the BBC), but flea beetles are still pretty impressive with how high and fast they can jump!
      So, if you're walking around campus this spring and you see something spring from a plant really quickly, it could be one of these flea beetles! Have a great weekend everyone!

Spring is Springing!

Our weather this month in Oklahoma has been funky, to say the least. In this state we're pretty used to huge swings of temperature in short period of time depending on which winds are strongest (warm from the south, cold from the north). They are so strong that, during the months of March-May, we have our annual Tornado season. We haven't had any tornadoes yet, but we did have a pretty nasty hail storm this past weekend. I won't go too far into weather patterns (we have a whole meteorology department here at OU for that, as well as the National Weather Service), or talk too much about global warming (its a fact...whether you believe it or not is up to you), but the fact of the matter is we've hit our Oklahoma spring, and hit it hard.
     The trees have started to bud-out, and the oakes have put out their pollen panicles...the start of flowers and leaves and plant growth for spring. This means that soon all the insects will also be out in full-swing, since many depend on the plants and trees for the first doses of nutrition to power the first generations of insects. This is especially true for groups of insects like aphids, and my study group of insects, the plant bugs (Miridae). Both depend on new-growth leaves and tissues to get the sugary sap, and nutritious plant-cells to grow and develop, so the temperatures and day light start triggering the overwintering eggs of these insects to hatch. Soon it will be a few weeks of boom or bust feeding, growing, dispersing, laying eggs, and then repeating.

Pine aphids. From Landscape IPM Advisory website at Utah State

      I took one of my volunteers out into the field behind the museum to show him the methods of collecting insects and what to expect for insects this time of year, and one of the most prominent bugs already out are massive swarms of aphids feeding on the pine trees. Aphids are interesting because they are one of the insect groups that have live-births (viviparity), and also have cloning (parthenogenesis). Especially in the spring, to take advantage of the plant growth and hopefully not have populations completely eaten by predators, there is pressure to produce as many aphids as possible and as quickly as possible. So, rather than wait around for a mate for sexual reproduction, many aphids will just clone copies of themselves in mass, producing huge populations of identical individuals. Later in the season aphids will switch to sexual reproduction and produce males and females, but right now on the pines its swarms of females.

Aphid reproduction. Image from San Fransisco State University Lab website.

         So, if you are walking around campus lately, take a look at the insects that are also coming out at the same time. I bet you'll see a few aphids, and soon the tide will start of all kinds of really neat and interesting insects starting their yearly cycle of life. Have a good week!

Science! In Action...

   This past week our department participated in Science in Action and Spring Break Escape, two outreach activities that work with kids in our state to learn more about science. The former is part of our museum's Newman-Whittman ExplorOlogy Program, the latter is by our Education Department.  
       Laura and Tamaki, our dynamic department duo, helped do the Spring Break Escape portion because I was in the field with the Science in Action team. They brought out specimen drawers from our collection to talk about our insects and other recent invertebrates, which as you know we have a lot of! It went really well, despite some events with the building that were unpredicted. Having them do the programing along with our two exhibits on spiders and insects is a great pairing.
      Science Escape is a program that takes elementary to middle-school age kids into Sutton Wilderness to learn about the scientific method and fieldwork. We [Jes and Kristi from the ExplorOlogy program, Jessa and I as science experts] first go to the schools and teach them about the scientific method. Then, once they learn the basics of it (observations; ask questions; develop hypothesis; test hypothesis; draw conclusions), we take them out into the field to make observations of the world around them at Sutton. There are 5 environments at Sutton that we take them to: woods, a pond (VERY dried out pond), lake, wetlands, then grasslands. While in the environments we have them look for the things that interest them or give them questions that they'd like to learn more about later. Once we wrap up our observations of the different environments at Sutton, we take them back to the museum to write down their observations in the field journals we give each kid for them to keep. This is followed by lunch, and then formulating questions in groups that they can develop a hypothesis and a experiment to test it with. Then we go back into the field and actually attempt to test the hypotheses, and then wrap up with program with drawing conclusions and answering any other questions about science or the scientific method.

Overview of Sutton Wilderness Park from the BioBlitz website

     We had four days of this program, with ages of the kids ranging from 3rd graders to 8th graders. Some of the more interesting questions we had included: what lives in holes; which habitat has the most frogs; and are there more insects in trees or grass. The kids had a great time looking for animals, and a lot of them really enjoyed just getting in the mud of the lake and pond and getting completely covered in dirt. Since some of the kid's groups are from inner-city OKC, many have never been in the field, so just getting outside was a joy for them. In the field over the 4 days we saw at least 3 species of frogs, a red-tailed hawk, lots of red-eared slider turtles, crayfish, ducks, snails, millipedes, lots of isopods (rolly pollys), cardinals, butterflies, beetles, etc. Many of these sightings were first for the kids. Personally, I'm really happy since many were into the insects and spiders: yay!
       Overall it was a lot of fun and I think we reached out to a lot of kids this week. Lets go Science!
        

Dung Beetles!

Hi everyone!

Lately I've been working with a certain type of beetle that gets a bit of a bad rap - the dung beetle. What do you think of when you hear about dung beetles? You're probably grimacing to yourself and thinking about beetles that spend all day swimming around in poo. Well, let me set the record straight - these little beetles are so much cooler and more helpful than that!

Dung beetles are in the family Scarabaeidae, which are the scarab beetles. Scarab beetles were a large part of the culture in ancient Egypt. Egyptians believed that scarab beetles with their balls of dung had a connection to the rising sun each morning.

Today, you might consider dung beetles as dirty, but they actually do a great job of tidying up the planet. After a large animal produces dung, the dung beetles roll up the dung into little balls, which they  roll by standing on their front legs and kicking with their back legs. They quickly roll the ball far away from the dung pile, and then burrow with it, "recycling" the dung for nutrients and to rear their young.

Dung beetles in action:

Here's a close-up photo of a dung beetle's incredibly strong front legs:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Scarabaeus_viettei_01.jpg

Dung beetles will fight over these dung balls, and other males sometimes try to steal them away, which is why the beetles roll the dung balls away from the original pile. Females do not do the rolling, but they will sometimes ride along on the ball to help keep it together.

Another interesting thing about these beetles use the Milky Way to figure out where they're going while they roll. They can also use the moonlight, but just this year a study reported that dung beetles could still figure out where they were going by orienting themselves to the stars. Here is more information about this study:

By breaking down dung in this way, dung beetles help increase soil health, as well as curbing some of the flies that would have been attracted to the dung pile for reproduction. If you should happen to see one rolling a dung ball, watch him - but let him go along his way.

Happy Friday everyone!

Science in Action and February Finds

   This past weekend was the first weekend in a while where there wasn't a museum related activity for members of our department, which was honestly a welcome break for us to spend time with our families and return to our non-bug-research related lives for a bit. However, the weekend before we had Science in Action and ID Day at the Sam Noble Oklahoma Museum of Natural History on Sunday from 1-5pm. This event allows all of the departments in our museum to talk about their collections, research, and other activities while also having the curators there to help identify objects or specimens collected by Oklahomans. The most popular departments to visit during ID day are the Archaeology and Paleontology departments, since many people bring objects they believe to be fossils or arrowheads to have our experts look at. Other departments, such as ours or the other "recent" natural history departments (Ornithology, Herpetology, Mammalogy, etc.), usually get a few objects to identify but not a whole lot in comparison.
      Last year we had a lot of visitors with commercially purchased shells (such as shells bought for hermit crabs, shells you can buy while you're at the beach...etc.) that they wanted identified. Since neither myself or Laura is a malacologist (someone who studies mollusks), we did the best we could identifying what they had. We got to the mollusk family in most cases, but because a lot of the shells are exotic shells (from China, South East Asia), its even more of a challenge to figure out what they are because we only have guides to North America.

A selection of shells found at pet-stores for hermit crabs. Many are not what you'd normally find "as is" here in North America, making identification for us challenging!

    This year we had no shells (yay!), but only two arthropods. One was a small, dead jumping spider (Phidippus sp.) that was somewhat convenient because of our focus on spiders and jumping spiders in particular for our shows, and the other insect was a dead green lacewing (Chrysopus sp.). Both animals are out and about in late February probably because of the unseasonably warm weather out for a few days, and unfortunately also got hit with the cold temps again as Oklahoma see-saws its way through Spring and froze.
    Green Lacewings are able to survive in colder temperatures that most other insects can't tolerate here in North America, and are effective predators for other insects that are bad for crops, such as aphids. This is why they are commonly used for integrative pest management in many gardens and crops: they can be around longer than other insects to control pest insects in different growing seasons (spring, summer, fall, winter), and they are fairly easy to work with. If you are around lights during the night in spring and fall Green Lacewings are usually the first and last insects you'll see around, including here in Oklahoma.

Life cycle of Green Lacewings. From U.C. Davis IMP website (http://www.ipm.ucdavis.edu/PMG/NE/green_lacewing.html)

     I wonder what next year's event will bring! Please no shells, though!

Fly-tying recap; Science in Action

Hey everyone! Well, the weekend of the fly-tying course proved to be busier than I had planned, so I couldn't get to the recap of the class until now. Apologies!
    The purpose of teaching the fly-tying course at the Museum was two-fold. First, fly-tying is primarily based on entomology, which goes with our bug-themed exhibitions we're having right now. Fly-fishing is an art form in of itself, where you cast your line from the fishing rod to actively fish, hoping that the lures that you tied on your hooks and the action of your line mimic insects or other invertebrate prey enough to get a fish to bite. When people think of fly-fishing they normally think of salmon or trout fishing, but it also can be used for other local fishes in different streams and bodies of water. Here in Oklahoma most people fish for bass, but there are other fish that will be tempted by a well-tied fly and a well trained fisherman!

Example of an Adam's Dry Fly, mimicking a Midge. From Wikipedia.com

     As Andy Boswell, our entomologist and avid fly-fisher instructor, told us: fish are picky. Especially trout. If the lure doesn't act or look like a normal insect from the stream they are from, its unlikely that they will go after it. This is where entomology comes in, as he pointed out. If you are in an area that you plan to fish, it helps to investigate the water and environment around the river to see what insects are arriving and emerging from the water. That way, you can best mimic native insects the fish would eat when you tie your lures. For example, if only yellow mayflies are coming out of the river that you plan to fish and you have a ton of brown mayfly lures, you probably aren't going to fool the fish. Especially since its thought that fish can see color, so they do pay attention!

Andy teaching the class

   Andy taught our 18 students the main groups of insects that most fly-fishermen would come across to mimic for tying bait. Then he proceeded to show the class how to tie lures that mimic a beetle, a chironomid larvae, a caterpillar, an ant, and other insects. Since Andy is from Texas and has done a lot of fly-fishing in other states besides Oklahoma, he taught a lot of the general ties that can be catered to Oklahoma insects with small modifications. In total he taught about 4-5 flies, all of which each student had the opportunity to try out and take home their lure. I think will give our attendees a lot of success in their next fishing trips!
     We're hoping to continue teaching the class or at least having a more advanced class for those who came to this first class. The second reason we taught this course was to try to reach a different demographic of Oklahomans that normally wouldn't visit the museum, and I think we accomplished that. Most people that come to our museum are families: we are very successful at children's and family programming. However, there is a lot of areas we can improve on with adult programing, and this maybe is a neat way we can teach the science behind some of the popular nature sports in our state. Andy was a fantastic instructor and we hope to get him back soon, but we also are looking for native Oklahomans too that might have insight about Oklahoman insects if we continue this long-term.

Other students in the class tying away!

     The next big event for our department is Science in Action and ID Day, which is this Sunday. During this event we talk about our department, identify specimens people bring in, and promote our state's natural history. If you're in the area and have an artifact or specimen you'd like us to identify or to learn more about what is going on with science in our state, stop on by! Hope to see you there!

Fly-tying Frenzy!

- I'll be blogging to you guys more this weekend after we complete our Fly-Tying Frenzy class tomorrow, being taught by fellow Aggie Entomologist Andy Boswell. We'll highlight why entomology is important for making accurate and effective lures for fish, and tell you more about how the class went!-

And the Show goes on!

   Last Friday was the Opening of two Invertebrate themed Exhibitions at the Sam Noble Museum: Beautiful Beasts featuring the photography of Thomas Shahan, and Bugs Outside of the Box by Outhouse Exhibit Services. Because our department was so involved with the Opening and participated in it, unfortunately we didn't get an opportunity to post a blog article. But, instead today we get to recap what a great night it was! All of the images provided here are from our part-time collection manager Jessa Watters, who was generous enough to take some photos of the event!
    The first thing that started the publicity off and led the big event was putting out our giant inflatable spider. Initially we had hoped to string it up on the side of the building's entrance, but because of the wind we had to keep it on the ground for a while. This was a mixed blessing, however, because taking a photo with the spider became one of the "must do's" events on campus, and we had all kinds of people coming in to be photographed in the fangs, running away from, or on top of our spider.

The Spider! Image from SNOMNH.

Build a bug!

    Because the Opening of the exhibits was open to the public, we were expecting a fairly large crowd but were not expecting such a large turnout! The main gallery had several themed tables set up with different activities and learning stations for the attendees. The Education department had two sets of tables: one was Build a Bug where kids could make their own insects using paper cutouts of different wings, legs, etc. The other was learning about Insect Lifecycles, where they could interact with materials to learn about metamorphosis and other ways insects grow. Kids had a great time learning at these tables.
     Another table that was set up was about insects as food. Insects as a food source, especially for protein, has been a hot topic lately as many countries are looking for other ways to feed their populations. With less pressure on the environment to produce, we wanted people to give bugs a try here in Oklahoma at our opening to see what they think. And it was a huge hit! Hot Lix is a company that specializes in unique edibles, and we purchased several boxes of their dried and flavored crickets and mealworms ("Crickettes" and "Larvettes"), as well as chocolate covered ants. By the end of the evening we went through at least 144 boxes of snacks! If someone ate a bug, they got a pin saying telling everyone about it. Our Undergraduate Research Assistant Laura Figueroa and volunteer Betty Braun were some of the toughest ladies I know dealing with the crowds of kids and adults wanting to try the food, and they both did it with big smiles on their faces and with lots of encouragement to give it a try!

Mmm...bugs

    The last four themed tables covered Insect Products, Insect Sounds, the Recent Invertebrates Collection and the Herpetology collection. The Herpetology department was involved in creating a table about Insects and Herps since they both are often tied together either as food or as an enemy, which led to the title "Food, Friend or Foe?". Jessa created the table featuring different frogs and reptiles that either depend on insects for food, or have to deal with defending themselves from insects as they develop while tadpoles for example. Kids loved this table as well because not only were there cool insects, but neat snakes and frog specimens too! Leading the way at this table was volunteer Marilyn Hammond, and I think she did a great job because it was one of the most popular tables!

Herps + Inverts = awesome

      Insect Products was also a popular table, where we talked about the different products that we use in our society either made from or with insects. This included things like silk, figs, shellac and cochineal (which we talked about in earlier articles). People were interested mainly in the figs...nobody really thought about how the fruit was made, and that they were eating a tiny wasp when they enjoyed their favorite Fig Newtons! The silk was also a popular item to touch, and the honey and wax as products to talk about. We had two fantastic volunteers at this table helping us out and talking about bugs: Bill Miller and Marj Greer.

Insect products!

   We tried to get all kinds of senses stimulated about insects, so we also had a table about Insect Sounds where people could listen to recordings of insects vibrating, stridulating, and singing. Eleven songs were picked and put on six iPods for adults and kids to listen to, and we had several pamphlets on the table with descriptions of each song so people could learn more about them. I think one of the favorite songs was one of a male braconid wasp singing to a female wasp to get her attention! We had two awesome volunteers Nance Ross and Carol Hutton at this table along with our Collection Manager Tamaki Yuri being our representatives!

Insect Sounds! Pamphlets were also handed out about the songs, and demos of how a tympanum in cicadas works were achieved using the baby-food jar pop tops, provided by Jessa Watters.

     Our last table was about the Recent Invertebrates Collection. At that table we had one of the large display cases that was used in the earlier Darwin Exhibit made by former Herpetology Curator Laurie Vitt and Jessa Watters, showing all the diversity of insects from Oklahoma. At the table we also had examples of crayfish, mollusks, spiders, and a jar of material that shows the "before curation" stage for most of our recent samples. Collection Assistant Laura Sohl-Smith and our volunteer Sally Mae Johnson did a fantastic job representing our collection and telling everyone why insects are so cool, and worth studying. I think they converted a lot of kids into future entomologists!

Our two lead ladies doing a great job representing all that is awesome about invertebrates!

 














       One of the other big draws for many people for the night was to see The Bug Chicks, which are two friends of mine from graduate school who now have a fantastic company that uses insects as a model to overcome fears and prejudices, while also fostering curiosity about the natural world. They did a fantastic presentation about insects that both kids and adults loved, and were able to really engage everyone about why insects and spiders are such fascinating creatures. They were a real hit!
      Overall a big thank you should also go to Jay Jamison and Jen Tregarthen for making the Opening such a hit and promoting it so well, as well as Helena Cohen for leading the forefront for the Education Department. A huge congratulations should also go to Tom Luczycki for creating a FANTASTIC Beautiful Beasts Exhibition...the layout, the lighting...everything is absolutely fantastic in that show. If you haven't gotten a chance to see it yet, you really should!

The Opening in full swing!

  I'm glad everything went so well, and that we got record attendance as a result. I knew Oklahomans loved insects and spiders too, and it shows ;).

Bon appetit!

Are you planning on coming to the Beautiful Beasts / Bugs Outside the Box opening a week from today? Bring your appetites, if you are! I know we've mentioned eating bugs before, and Miridae has previously written an informative post about all of the benefits of eating bugs: high in protein, low in fat, and high in environmental sustainability. However, aside from the worm at the bottom of a bottle of tequila, it's not terribly common to see insects cooked and prepared as food for us.

Disclaimer: if you have a seafood allergy, you probably shouldn't try eating insects. Your allergy could be a reaction to the chitin found in shrimp, lobsters, and crayfish. Insects are made up of this same chitin. Just admire them from afar, if this is the case for you.

At this opening, you will have the opportunity to sample ants, meal worms, and crickets if you so desire. You might be wondering how on earth these are prepared, and actually there are many ways that you can prepare insects for consumption. Other countries are a bit ahead of us when it comes to the association between bugs and eating - it's a very common, accepted food staple in areas of Asia and Africa. Here, we're still pretty hedgy on the idea, and it's too bad - especially when you consider that so many people are trying to incorporate high protein/low fat foods into their diets.

Insects as food in Thailand
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Insect_food_stall.JPG

My first run-in with some cooked insects came at an entomology conference. Among the buffet of chicken sticks, artichoke dip, and cheese, there were a few tureens of salt-and-pepper roasted crickets, as well as some roasted larvae. However, at this point, it's time I confessed: I actually did not sample these insects. I know, I know, I'm disappointed in myself too. But this time, I'll walk the walk at the opening, and actually give these a whirl.

Salt and pepper roasted crickets. See, it's all garnished with lettuce and everything!

Another way to enjoy insects is to deep fry them. As we've seen at the state fair, one can deep fry practically anything and people will eat it, so that method doesn't seem as big of a stretch to me. In fact, I'll bet deep-fried insects could be a hit at the fair. These are fried silkworm pupae on a stick.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Fried-silkworm-china.jpg

 If you've got a sweet tooth, perhaps you'll enjoy this ant lollipop. 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Ant_pop.jpg

Personally, I'm downright looking forward to trying the chocolate-covered ants at the opening. Are you game?

Happy Friday!

Insect Products Preview

    Continuing to preview some of the topics tables that will be set up for the Bugs Outside the Box and Beautiful Beasts Opening on February 1st, we will talk about insect products that are used by humans. One product that will (hopefully) be featured is shellac, which is produced by the female lac bug.

Lac bug. Image from Wikipedia.com

    If you work with furniture or antique furniture, you might be aware of the varnish known as shellac. Its made up of glassy flakes that when mixed with alcohol (usually ethyl alcohol) forms a liquid that can coat wood. The coating can color the wood (usually brown or orange) and provides a protective sealant when its dry against moisture and damage. Natural shellac is hard to find these days because it has been all but replaced by synthetic varnishes and plastics, but the history about the original is pretty interesting.
   Shellac comes from the secretions on the outside of the female scale insect, the lac bug Kerria lacca. This bug is found primarily in India where it can coat trees in with secretions when they get in very large numbers. Their natural reddish color was also used for a red pigment in cosmetics as well, but the insects were primarily used to get the coating for the varnish. The varnish was even used in paintings for color or protection. Colors for shellac ranged from yellow to brown or red, and depended on the insect's food sources.

Live lac bugs on a branch. Image from Wikipedia.com

   Finding shellac today is fairly difficult these days, and even though there are testimonials about how its still a great finish compared to synthetics, its usually restricted to antique dealers that work with furniture. Other uses of shellac have been found, though, including medications and other coatings. Bug Girl, who blogs about insects as well, has this great blog post about shellac and its use in candy coatings! Shellac in its dried form is shown on the left. The orange shellac on the left was often used on pine-wood paneling in the Southern United States, and the reddish shellac on the right was used as another color type.
     Hopefully I can track some down so that we can have some for the opening and to show another neat way insect products have benefited our society! Check out the video to learn more :)

Come hear the Buzz

    In a few weeks we'll be opening our Bugs Outside of the Box and Beautiful Beasts exhibitions at the museum, which will focus on insects and spiders, respectively. The opening of the galleries for the exhibits on February 1st will be a huge event, featuring the Bug Chicks and different tables of insect-themed topics, including insect products and foods. As a preview to one of the tables that will also be featured, are Insect Sounds. I'm going to talk about one group of insects that produce some of the loudest, the cicadas.
    Many insects, like humans, use sound to communicate with each other. Some of the most prominent examples that we can hear are cicadas during the summer days, and katydids during the summer nights. Cicadas in particular are some of the loudest insects on earth. Some cicadas can get up to 90 decibels with their humming, which is the volume range between heavy traffic and a NYC subway. Get next to a colony of them, and you can really get a buzz. They produce the sound using their tymbal, which is like a drum that they vibrate rapidly and amplify the sound with.
      Growing up in Virginia, I remember my first experience with being next to a huge colony of them, and they were part of a special group of cicadas, the periodical cicadas (Magicicada septendecim). I was about 5 years old, and it was the first time I was around when Brood X made their appearance in the Northern Virginia area.

Magicicada septendecim, Periodical Cicada face. From Wikipedia.com

 The periodical cicadas are special because they only emerge from the ground every 13 to 17 years, with Brood X coming out every 17. They spend most of their life feeding on the roots of trees, and nobody knows how they "know" to come up, but within a few days whole colonies (known as "broods") emerge together. Thousands, if not millions of cicadas, all coming out of the ground to roost on trees, feed, sing, mate, then die.
     So, within a few days and lasting a few weeks, Brood X came together on the trees to sing to each other, hoping to find mates. I still remember the noise: if you stood near one of their favorite trees to feed and lay eggs on, like a cherry tree, it felt like you were standing next to a giant jet-engine with the loud, constant waves of humming. With 90 decibels on average a cicada, you can imagine what thousands must sound like.

     After they mated and laid their new batches of eggs into the branches of trees to start the next Brood X generation, they quietly died and the yard around my pre-school was covered with their black and red bodies. Another vivid memory was of stepping on all of their exoskeletons since the ground was literally covered with them, and thinking of how fun it was that it sounded like walking on popcorn: a quiet reprieve, though, from the loud sound of them alive.

    Fast forward 17 years, and I got to experience the hum again of the offspring of those cicadas I saw as a kid. Just coming back from my college graduation, I was back with my parents in Northern Virginia for a few months before moving to Texas for my masters...and the cicadas were back as well. Only this time, it seemed like they were louder than ever, and far more numerous. Their increase in numbers was likely due to the increase in reforestation of Northern Virginia from when it was mostly farmland, and the cicadas were VERY happy to have more trees. If you drove around in a convertible, you would be surrounded by the waves of humming vibrating from the trees passing along the Beltway. Dogs were chasing the cicadas for free, yummy snacks. Birds were fat, squirrels happy. And all for a short few weeks before again dying and waiting for the new generation to take hold on the tree roots for another 17 years. I was 22 when I got to experience them again, and unfortunately I'm not sure I'll be back in Virginia again at 39 to see them next. I think my ears might be happy about that, though! Below is a video taken from someone who experienced Brood X in 2004 too.

     Come to the Insect Sound table at the Opening Reception for our two shows February 1st to hear more stories about insect sounds and more!