We have a secret. What you see when you come here to the
Bean Life Science Museum is only a fraction of what we actually have stored
here. On display we have a few hundred animals for you to see. Behind the
scenes, we over a million plants and animals! Want to see what is behind those
closed doors?
The insect collection houses over 2 million insects! That’s a lot of creepy crawlies. The insect collection is just one of eight scientific collections here at the Bean Life Science Museum.
Why do we have so many insects? When Dr. Shawn Clark (the
entomology collection manager) is asked this question, he reminds people that
when you are talking about insects, you are dealing with a lot species. In
fact, when you count all named species across all living things, there about
the same number of insect species as everything else combined! We need a lot of
insects just to get an accurate representation of what is out there.
This insect collection is used primarily for research. Most of that research is on systematics which is
the study of understanding how living things are related to each other.
How do we keep these specimens safe? Insects are collected and
stored a variety of ways. Typically an insect is collected with nets or
different kinds of traps.
Most insects are stored on pins. This works really
well for insects since they have an external skeleton. The external skeleton
won’t shrivel up when it’s dried. This means that a dried insect specimen on a
pin looks just like the insect did when it was alive! It is, however, extremely
fragile so they are never touched directly. If they are not stored on pins,
insects can also be preserved in ethanol, envelopes, or microscope slides.
You can start your own insect collection easily at home.
It’s fun and interesting to see the variety of insects all around us! Visit our museum store for supplies.