The Field Museum

It's summer in Chicago many years ago. I'm running down the sidewalk in my favorite blue dress, trying to keep up with my dad as we follow the big yellow dinosaur tracks. They lead us through a tunnel under Lake Shore Drive, up the hill to a sprawling set of stone stairs, then between the soaring pillars. Inside are mummies in sarcaophagi, massive dinosaur skeletons, and humongous dinner table set for giants! (I don't really know why the giant dinner table is the thing that sticks out in my memory, but so it goes.)

This was my introduction to the Field Museum of Natural History. And now, years later, I have a real entomology job there! I am working in this beautiful place:

Well, technically. Unbeknownst to my 5-year-old self, there were millions of insects and other specimens tucked behind the walls of the exhibits and on strange half floors accessible only by a rickety elevator. Had I known this, my parents would have had a tough time getting me out of there. 

However, with all the glamour that befits an entomologist, this is where I do most of my work.

 This is a behind the scenes look into to guts of the museum, where millions of specimens are stashed away in cabinets and drawers, in fireproof library stacks, and in separate underground bunkers where jars and vials of specimens steeping in flammable alcohol can be safely stored.  This is the dry insect collection between the first and second floors. See that teeny tiny person sitting at the very end? All of these library stacks between the camera and that person are full of, well, dead bugs. Butterflies, beetles, dragonflies, roaches, wasps, bees, mantids, among many other orders of insects are carefully mounted on pins and meticulously described in tiny handwriting or typeset.  Over hundreds of years, collectors all over the world have compiled this priceless collection. Oh, and it smells STRONGLY of mothballs.

The reason why is insects like this one: the dermestid beetle.

Dermestid beetles are simultaneously the best friend and worst enemy of natural history museums. Best friend because they can clean an animal skeleton to perfection for display, picking away any non-bone tissue with precision that humans can't dream of accomplishing. But that also means...they eat everything else. The beetles and similar critters could demolish an insect collection if they got loose in the wrong places, and the museum takes this very seriously. They have a special pest control department, and employees are asked to report any, um, live insect sightings immediately.

So whats the point of keeping a bunch of dead bugs? It brings to mind an arcane image of a distinguished old gentleman, like this serious fellow, traipsing about the fields with a collecting net, naming new species after himself and displaying them in glass cases for other taxonomists to admire . In a world in which we have sequenced the genomes of thousands of different species, and revealed that there are entire ecosystems on a human knee, what are these collections doing but gathering dust in museums?

http://theconversation.com

Well, natural history museums, like the Field, are massive repositories of biodiversity. And no, Jurassic Park fans, I'm not talking about extracting DNA these specimens to rescue honeybees or bring back giant dragonflies (not that that wouldn't be awesome). Each of these millions of specimens is marked with a time and place of collection, and so with enough specimens, you can begin to piece together knowledge of what creatures lived where and when, how diverse various places are, how species evolved and radiated throughout the world, and, of course, where biodiversity is disappearing. These collections are powerful tool that helps us determine the impacts of climate change, invasive species, and human development on life on earth.

And now, dedicated employees and volunteers at museums all over the world are dragging these specimens out from their fire-proof vaults and digitizing them- recording collecting information and uploading photos of each one. It is a monumental task, but it's already starting to pay off as scientists begin to compile open source, searchable online databases, so that any scientist in the world can access this valuable information that was once hidden away in museum storerooms, and can learn, for example, how biodiversity has shifted in her part of the globe.

For my particular job, I've combed these databases for occurrences of dragonfly and damselfly from collections throughout the US,  sometimes going back a few hundred years.  I'm also adding my own specimen information from a vials of dragonfly naiads (young) from a fifty-year-old collection all the way from...the UW Madison Entomology Department!

Old dragonflies in vials. So many vials.

This is what a baby dragonfly (naiad) looks like. It lives underwater and hunts by shooting out a collapsible spoon-shaped mouthpart with lightning speed and scooping up prey. Pretty rad. Photo credit: Drew Fulton 2014

Because all roads seem to lead back to Madison, this summer, we will be re-sampling dragonfly communities at the same sites that former collectors sampled from, including the lovely Lake Mendota. Doing so will inform us of what has changed in dragonfly populations and diversity since the 1960's. Dragonflies and damselflies (both belonging to the order Odonata) are key indicators of water quality, and seeing how their populations have changed can yield important information. We will also be searching online databases with decades of data about aquatic plants in the area to see if we can find any correlation between a change in Odonate populations and the spread of the nasty invasive Eurasian Watermilfoil, which showed up in Wisconsin in, guess what, the 1960s. Eurasian Watermilfoil clogs waterways and fouls boat propellers, but there is still much to be learned about how it impacts aquatic communities. If this research is successful, in future years, the scope will be expanded to include other variables and insect groups.

This dragonfly (a twelve-spotted skimmer?) is from the Biocore Prairie in Madison

The Field Museum is an exciting place to be for a scientist, with weekly seminars (this weeks was, I kid you not, on the evolution of the penis bone), museum-wide events, special exhibit viewings, groups like Women in Science which I recently joined, and of course, lots of interesting coworkers. At my first Friday gathering, I found myself thrust into an animated conversation between a snail researcher and an anthropologist who works with indigenous communities in Peru. When asking around to find more ethanol for sample preservation, I wandered into a lab and soon found myself with a glowing blue Tanzanian scorpion perched on my hand. (It was after I had returned it safely to its terrarium that the owner and resident "Bug Guy" told me that he didn't let most people hold venomous creatures like this one. I guess I should be honored?!) Its a fun place to be.

Stay tuned as I delve deeper into the community of researchers and farther into the dark and dusty corners of the collections.