Our next event for young entomologists, aged 10-14, will be ‘The Big Draw: Insects!‘ on Wednesday 26 October 2022, 10.30am – 12pm at the Museum of Natural History in Oxford.
Timed to coincide with the half-term break for local schools and to link in with other ‘Big Draw’ events in October, The Big Draw: Insects! is your chance to try your hand at drawing insects in three different styles: artistic, scientific and cartooning.
We’ll be based in the newly-refurbished Westwood Room at the museum and will be drawing a range of exciting insects from the museum’s collections. This event is suitable for all abilities from beginners to those who already enjoy drawing frequently.
The Big Draw: Insects! is free but you need to book in advance by emailing us at hopelearning@oum.ox.ac.uk
If you’re interested in cartooning, you might be interested in this post by Chris Jarvis on Drawing a Minotaur Beetle.
Kate Jaeger and Susie Glover have been Learning Officers at the heart of the HOPE For The Future project since the programme started in 2020. As their time with the project draws to an end, they reflect on their exciting role, what they enjoyed most about it, and choose their favourite insects from the many they encountered.
There are three HOPE Learning Officers and one Community Officer working on the project. We all help people learn more about insects and the museum’s collections, inspiring them to learn more, and even get more involved.
The learning officers work with young people. You may have met us at school, at an event in the museum, or you may have read an article like this in the blog. Our role includes running insect themed activities:
Insect Discovery Days in Schools
Insect Investigators Summer School
Insect Explorers after school club in the museum
Events for young people
Training for teachers to help them teach about insects
Of course, we also run this blog aimed at young people who want to learn more about insects, as well as developing various online resources for teachers and young people to use, and enjoy.
When did you first become interested in insects?
Kate:
I have always loved the natural world. As a child, I lived in the countryside and my pockets were often full of things I had collected such as stones, seeds, sticks and, once, much to my mother’s surprise, a live mole! I was especially fond of butterflies and had an I-Spy book in which I ticked off species I had seen. Soon other books on insects, birds, fossils, minerals, dinosaurs and human evolution filled my shelves.
This interest in the natural world stayed with me into adulthood and when I became a teacher, I trained as a Forest School Leader so that I could share my love of the outdoors with others. Working on the HOPE for the Future project has given me a unique opportunity to indulge my passion and learn much more about insects from the incredible entomology team here at the museum. The more I find out about insects, the more fascinated I become! The insect world is full of surprises and I am constantly amazed by these tiny creatures, without whom our planet Earth would not be able to survive.
Susie:
As a child I loved being outside, climbing trees, digging holes, investigating the different creatures in my back garden, and generally being surrounded by natural and wildlife.
I did well in school, but was particularly good at Biology. It just made sense to me, and I found it really interesting, and so I went on to study it at University. While biology is a fairly broad subject, I focused mainly on ecology, animal behaviour and evolution, learning more about the creatures all around us, including insects.
I have worked for several years teaching people about Nature and British Wildlife, including British insects, and always found them interesting. However, it wasn’t until I started my role here at the museum, working on the HOPE for the Future project that I really focused in on insects. Over the past couple of years I have learnt so much more about these fascinating creatures, and the multitude of different ways they find to survive and thrive.
What is your favourite insect?
Kate:
My favourite insect is constantly changing, but at the moment I am keen on this little true bug: Issus cleoptratus.
Issus cleoptratus. Image credit: Fritz Geller-Grimm, CC BY-SA 2.5
Not the most beautiful of insects but a fascinating one nonetheless! This species of plant hopper is the first living creature known to possess functional, interlocking gears or cogs. These gears are positioned on its hind legs and help to synchronise the legs when jumping, making sure the bug can hop in a straight line!
Check out this video which explains it all:
Working gears evolved in plant-hopping insects. Scientific American.
See what I mean about the insect world being full of surprises?
Susie:
I have always loved butterflies. They are such beautiful majestic creatures. When I see the first butterflies of the year, which are often the bright yellow brimstone butterflies, I feel that winter is over and summer is truly on the way. However, I think my favourite has to be one of the most common garden butterflies in England and Wales, the Peacock Butterfly (Aglais io).
The Peacock Butterfly, Aglais io
To protect themselves these butterflies use a combination of camouflage and Mimicry. When at rest they sit with their wings closed, so that all you can see are the almost black undersides of their wings that look rather like dead leaves. But when their wings are open, you can see the brightly coloured top side of the wings, with large round spots, that look like large eyes. These eyespots are there to startle and confuse predators.
What is your favourite part of the project?
Kate:
Well, I have had the privilege to work in one of the world’s most fascinating museums, with one of the best entomology collections in the UK and with some very interesting people. I particularly enjoyed creating the ‘To Bee or not to Bee’ activity in which you have to identify the real bees among the bee mimics. It has proved a hit with all ages, from young children to seasoned entomologists, and we hope to produce an online version to bring it to a wider audience. The thing I have enjoyed most, though, is meeting hundreds, if not thousands, of young people through the course of the project, both here in the museum and in their schools. Their interest and enthusiasm for insects and the natural world has really given me hope for the future.
Susie:
I love coming up with new activities to help people learn about insects and the world around them. There are three activities that I particularly enjoyed developing:
The Case of the Stolen Specimen – this was for an event for 10 to 14 year olds. We developed a puzzle for the young people to solve. A Specimen had been stolen from the museum and they had to solve puzzles and follow clues to find out what had been stolen, and who the thief was. It was great to see how much the participants seemed to enjoy working out the clues and rushing off to solve the crime.
Food Chains – this was an activity for the Discovery Days, that is now also available online for teachers to use. It is made up from a series of cards which each have a photo of an animal on one side (mostly insects), and information about what they eat on the other. You have to use this information to build food chains and webs.
Peppered Moth – this was also an activity for the Discovery Days. The participants have to put on glasses, which distort their vision, and then use tweezers to pick up as many “moths” as they can in a certain time. They can see which moths they pick up, and how the colour of the moth and background affected this.
We wish Kate and Susie all the best for their future as school teachers. If you have enjoyed this post, you might like to read about other people who work with insects on our ‘People’ section.
Measure beautiful bees from around the world to help biologists understand why bee species are declining.
The Big Bee Bonanza is a new citizen science project investigating the size of bees held in university and museum collections. Scientists want you to help measure bees using a simple online tool which will add your data to the project. The results will be useful both to bee conservation biologists and everyone interested in nature. Researchers will use these data to help understand why bees are declining. You get to see beautiful bees from around the world and help us save the bees at the same time!
Once you are on the site, we think it’s a good idea to watch the tutorial video first. You can do this by clicking on the ‘Field Guide’ tab (shown above). A video will then slide out from the left of the screen. When you are happy you know what to do, click the ‘Field Guide’ tab again to close the video. You can start measuring bees.
There are two steps. First measure part of the scale bar, to tell the computer the size of the image, then measure the distance between the tegulae at the base of the bee’s wings. Tegulae are structures that protect the wing where it joins onto the body.
We hope you have fun measuring bees. You can measure as few or as many as you like; it all provides useful data for bee researchers. If you’re interested in bees, you might want to take a look at our post on queen bees.
Our next event for young entomologists, aged 10-14, will be ‘Entohunt’ on 31 August 2022, 10am – 12pm at the Museum of Natural History in Oxford.
Entohunt is your chance to take a closer look at the wonderful world of insects on our doorstep. We’ll start by making pooters in the museum and then, weather permitting, test them out in University Parks and see what insects we can find. There will also be a chance to try out other entomological collection methods.
Ladybirds are beetles from the family Coccinellidae. There are over 45 different species found in the UK. Some of these will very familiar to many people, with their bright colours and red or black spots. Other species, known as inconspicuous ladybirds, have more drab and muted colouring. In the video below you can learn how to make your own origami ladybird. Origami is the art of folding paper into shapes and decorations, that originated in Japan. All you need to make this origami ladybird is a square piece of paper (ideally black, yellow, red or orange), a black colouring pen, a white piece of chalk and a spare few minutes:
As you can see, I tried decorating my origami to look like ladybird species that we would find here in the UK. If you want to do the same there are some helpful ID guides by the Woodland Trust and the UK Ladybird Survey. Show us pictures of your Origami Ladybirds either in the comments below or email them to us at hopelearning@oum.ox.ac.uk.
Zoë Simmons, Head of Life Collections at Oxford University’s Museum of Natural History, tells us about her role, how she first became interested in insects and museum collections, and about some of her favourite insects.
In the video Zoë mentions the aposematic colouration of the pleasing fungus beetles. This means that these beetles are brightly coloured in order to warn predators that they are not good to eat (they are poisonous, venomous, or otherwise unpleasant to eat). Can you think of any other animals with aposematic colouring? Let us know in the comments below or via the Contact us page.
