PICAYUNE — Plans are already well underway for crafting a “buggy good time” for you and your family at the Crosby Arboretum in September. In case you haven’t heard of Bugfest, this is our annual celebration of all things creepy crawly. More than 600 people have been known to attend over the course of this two day event, which includes night collecting activities on Friday night.

School groups will begin arriving mid-morning for field activities on Friday, September 21, and the event will conclude the following day at 5:00 p.m. The classes will be greeted by Arboretum volunteers, and students and professors from Mississippi State University specializing in entomology. They will provide instruction on collecting methods and the classes will descend upon the Arboretum grounds to try their hand with a net and jar. When they discover something of interest, they will return to the Pinecote Pavilion for identifying the insect. Some will be collecting specimens simply to observe, identify, and release them, while others will be working to build their insect collections. Throughout the event, a station will be set up on the Pavilion to provide help with pinning (also called “mounting”) insect specimens.

Many of the MSU students who will be providing instruction for the visiting classes are long-time “bug campers”, having attended the summer entomology camps held each summer on the MSU campus, and based at the Clay Lyle building. Today, these former campers now provide assistance for the camps, and have made the transition from high school to their college studies in entomology.

Breanna Lyle is a big fan of spiders and enjoys helping others to conquer their arachnophobia. As she shares her abode with a steadily increasing number of eight-legged friends, including several tarantulas, she will no doubt be bringing along a few of her friends on her travels. But Breanna will also be bringing a very special treat for the visiting classes – the entomology department’s portable scanning electron microscope, on which she has recently been trained. This microscope will be housed in a traveling classroom equipped with a projector so that students will be able to view their specimens.

If you are not familiar with SEM images, visit a site such as Google Images and enter the keywords “scanning electron microscope images” and then add the name of anything tiny that you can think of such as dust mites, pollen, jumping spider, or ant. You soon get an idea of what the children will be able to see.

Breanna’s twin sister Deanna will also be assisting with the event. She has a fondness for butterflies, but has also discovered the captivating world of horticulture at Mississippi State University. Deanna will soon be enlightening visiting students with tales of plant-insect relationships.

Former bug camper Matthew Thorn is now studying insects at MSU, and will be assisting Bugfesters with collecting and pinning. He always brings his outstanding insect collections to the event and each year his collections grow more impressive. Edward Entsminger, a graduate student in the MSU Wildlife and Fisheries department, will help with the collecting and pinning activities and with setting up the sheets and lights to draw night insects on Friday. Dust off your headlamp and join these young adults and our other Arboretum volunteers in your quest for bugs!   

Why choose to spend your time collecting or observing insects? The simple reason is that they are incredibly fascinating. The collecting process also teaches children many valuable transferable skills, for example, through their observation of characteristics in order to identify them, and also through the methodical process of sorting the insects into specific groups, called insect orders.

You might also find that watching a cicada emerge from its exoskeleton (the topic of a recent column) is more exciting than watching television, because it’s real, amazing, and happening right in front of you. And after observing such an event, you may suspect where scriptwriters of horror movies found the inspiration for their screen monsters.

One of the Crosby Arboretum’s trails honors an insect aficionado, Dr. Ross E. Hutchin,s who started with Mississippi State University in 1931 as a graduate student and later became Professor of Entomology and Zoology. Dr. Hutchins served as Department Head from 1951 to 1963 and was a prolific writer and photographer. His photography collection is held in the Mississippi Entomological Museum, located on Mississippi State University’s Starkville campus. Some of his pictures can be viewed on their website (just enter the keywords into your favorite search engine), such as the one titled “Two male stag beetles fighting”. Photos like this are seen throughout the many delightful books Dr. Hutchins has authored on insect life and the natural world.

Teachers and homeschool educators interested in the sciences have long ago discovered that Dr. Hutchins’ books, very popular in the 1970’s, may now be picked up inexpensively at library discard sales or through used book sites on the Internet. Although they are written for a younger, junior-high or high school audience, his books are very readable, enjoyable, and educational for all ages.

Tips and manuals, along with other information to assist you in your buggy experience at the Arboretum or in your own backyard is available on the Internet, for example, a 4-H Entomology Handbook can be downloaded from our website (www.crosbyarboretum.msstate.edu) by clicking the bug on our program calendar page. This document covers the Bugfest event, collecting methods, and much more.

For more detailed information on Bugfest, see our website. Interested school groups may call the Arboretum office to schedule a Friday arrival time by calling (601) 799-2311. We are open Wednesday through Sunday from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. and located in Picayune, off I-59 Exit 4, at 370 Ridge Road (south of Walmart and adjacent to I-59).





For further exploration:  See “Insect Collecting Methods”, by Joe MacGown, on the Mississippi Entomological Museum’s website, for lists and information on collecting supplies for both terrestrial and aquatic insects. See www.whatsthatbug.com for reader-submitted images and questions and answers that will always amaze. Get the book “Pet Bugs” or “More Pet Bugs” for instructions on how to keep a variety of very economical pets.