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| Doug Yanega, senior museum scientist, knows his bugs. If you find a strange one, he can help identify it. |
The Entomology Research Museum at UC Riverside is legendary among insect experts worldwide for its extensive collection of bug specimens. Its primary mission is research collaboration and support: At any given time, 90 percent of its holdings are on loan to scientists around the globe. But it has proven equally valuable in conserving insect species and acquainting Californians with bugs that can help and harm us.
"Public education is an essential part of what anybody does at a university, and that is certainly true here," said Doug Yanega, the museum's senior scientist. "People come to us all the time when they need help identifying bugs, and we regularly take specimens to schools for outreach purposes."
With Jacques Cousteau as one of his boyhood heroes, Yanega has always had a fascination for fauna. But growing up in New York City put him on the path to entomology.
"New York doesn't have a lot of wildlife, but it has a lot of bugs," he said. "Every time you turn over a brick, you discover a new little world. Like many kids, I had a bug collection, and I've never lost my fascination with them."
After completing his undergraduate studies at Cornell, grad school at the University of Kansas and post-doctoral work at the Illinois Natural History Survey, Yanega spent three years doing field research in Brazil then headed to UC Riverside in 1999.
He was drawn to the museum by its rich history, dating back to1923 when its first specimens were transferred from the California State Insectary at Sacramento. The breadth of California's native insect populations makes UC an entomologist's paradise. By Yanega's estimate, the combined holdings of the Riverside, Davis and Berkeley campuses rank UC among the world's top five entomological collections.
The museum is best known for its holdings of bees and parasitic wasps – flying insects important to agriculture. The museum also has a trove of terrestrial insects from Southern California and Arizona, with an emphasis on native populations of desert bugs. It has an impressive array of Mexican bugs, primarily from Baja California and Sonora. But it also includes species from Thailand, Russia, India and Australia, with prize insects like the menacing Madagascar hissing roach and the iridescent Panamanian orchard bee.
The collection is nestled in the ground floor of the compact two-story museum building. With classical music playing in the background, Yanega, staff researchers and graduate students keep busy with an array of tasks that include sifting through the debris of insect traps, peering through microscopes at mystery bugs and cataloging specimens.
In his decade at the museum, Yanega has helped reorganize the collection from an alphabetical cataloging system to a more useful taxonomic system, and he has overseen the installation of mobile cabinets that have increased storage space and improved accessibility. But he does more than merely tend the existing collection.
Yanega and his colleagues are passionate about discovering new bugs – nine out of 10 of the world's bugs don't have names, he said.
Like many entomologists, he takes a special interest in dispelling bug myths: Spiders, for example, are routinely accused of wrongs they didn't commit.
"There is a tide of falsehoods about spiders, and the medical community helps perpetuate it," said Yanega. "When people in California seek treatment for small necrotic wounds, doctors often blame brown recluse spiders. But those spiders only live in the Midwest. There are 20 other more likely causes, and some are life-threatening, like methicillin-resistant staphylococcus."
Another widespread myth involves the species that is Yanega's research focus.
"As an expert on bees, I've gotten caught up in the discussion of colony collapse disorder, which has generated a lot of misinformation," he said. "The phenomenon only involves honeybees, a species that isn't native to North America. They're imported to begin with, and we can always import more. And we aren't even certain the extent to which this occurs and the amount of damage it has done."
The museum scientists work closely with agricultural researchers who track new trends in bugs that are either decimating California farmlands or feeding on pests that feed on crops. And they answer a steady stream of questions from people who are spooked by the sudden appearance of a monstrous-looking bug.
One of the most popular offerings on the museum's Web site is its Insect FAQ page, a pictorial menu of weird California bugs that provoke the most inquiries. They include the huge but harmless Jerusalem cricket and the pesky carpenter bees (which "have a tendency to scare the bejeezus out of people," Yanega said).
In addition to his work at the museum and his own studies of bee populations, Yanega spends a lot of his personal time contributing to entomology entries on Wikipedia, which allows him to share his expertise with a global audience.
"One of the things that got me interested in science was seeing how Jacques Cousteau reached so many people," he said. "Public impact is really important to me. A scientist who just does research and nothing else isn't giving anything back."
If you have an insect you need to identify, e-mail a digital photo to dyanega@ucr.edu
Kate Callen is a staff writer in UCOP Strategic Communications.