A ten-lined June bug (Polyphylla decemlineata) on Gunnera manicota
– A. Bryant

Karen Needham is Assistant Curator of the Spencer Entomological Collection, which is hosted by the Beaty Biodiversity Museum at UBC in Vancouver.

She spoke about the tremendous diversity of “bugs”, or more formally, arthropods.  She explained the differences between the “true bugs”, which includes leafhoppers and cicadas (the order Hemiptera), ants and bees (the order Hymenoptera) , beetles (the order Coleoptera), flies (the order Diptera), and butterflies, moths and skippers (the order Lepidoptera).  And there are many more!

She also talked about the importance of maintaining museum collections, and about the important insights that can be gleaned from careful study of specimens already collected, in some cases more than 100 years ago!