Did you know that one of every four living things on the planet is a beetle? There are over 350,000 species of beetles known and many more remain to be discovered and studied.
"Beetle Mania" will take over Morrill Hall when the University of Nebraska State Museum presents a program celebrating the beauty and diversity of beetles and other insects, 1:30 to 4:30 p.m., Aug. 15. Visitors will have the opportunity to interact with scientists and ask questions about the insects they collect and study. This program is part of the museum's monthly "Sunday with a Scientist" series.
"Beetle Mania," will be led by faculty and staff of the State Museum's Division of Entomology and UNL's Department of Entomology. The scientists will showcase a small selection of the most colorful and striking insects from the entomology research collections, which contain over two million specimens. Beetles collected from all over the world will be on display, including large tropical rhinoceros beetles, metallic wood boring beetles, long horn beetles, stag beetles, and more. Other insects on display will include giant silk moths, metallic blue Morpho butterflies, and giant spiders. There will also be information on Nebraska's endangered Salt Tiger Creek beetle and present efforts to aid in their conservation.
Children are encouraged to bring a "backyard bug" of their own to the museum for a scientist to identify. All insects must be in stored in closed containers and may be alive or dead.
The State Museum's Division of Entomology research collections were begun in 1887. The collections are comprised of approximately two million pinned, fluid-preserved, papered, and slide-mounted insects and arachnids, including the U. S. National Collection of Scarab Beetles from the Smithsonian Institution that is part of an open-ended, off-site enhancement loan. The collections rank in the top 10 university research collections in the U.S. Research programs focus on the biodiversity of Neotropical scarabaeoid beetles Team Scarab, is internationally recognized for its scarab beetle research and publications.
For more information, go to http://go.unl.edu/u5v. The Web page Scarabs for Kids, http://go.unl.edu/uyf, was created in May to help youth discover more about beetles.
For more information about Sunday with a Scientist, go to http://www.museum.unl.edu.
More details at: http://go.unl.edu/tmr