Photo: Alex Wild
Explore UT is an annual event that encourages students to become excited about higher education and the research opportunities at The University of Texas. And what better way to elicit curiosity than with rows of animal skulls and live snakes, spiders, and cockroaches?
The Entomology Collection, the Billie L. Turner Plant Resources Center, and the Freshman Research Initiative's Biodiversity Stream represented the Biodiversity Center on the March 2nd event, joining near 400 exhibits and activities. Students in the Freshman Research Initiative "Bugs in Bugs" stream taught young student visitors about the relationships between Texas native pollinators and the bacteria, yeasts, and viruses that live inside them.
The live arthropods on display included hissing cockroaches, black widow and brown recluse spiders, stick insects, and Cecropia moths, and were complemented by display drawers showing hundreds of real research specimens from the UT insect collection.
Photo: Alex Wild
