Over half of animal biomass on Earth is inhabited by insects. Every year, the Natural History Museum of Utah hosts BugFest, an event to educate and celebrate the importance and marvels of bugs, and there are events you won't want to miss.
Christy Bills is the invertebrates collections manager at the Natural History Museum of Utah.
“BugFest has got something for everybody. It's got stuff that's fun for kids like crafts and face painting," Bills said. "But it also has a lot of scientists and community partners like mosquito abatement and people who work with the Department of Agriculture and scientists and researchers.”
“This year, we also have a special exhibit happening at the same time called Microsculptures," Bills said. "They're gorgeous blown up photos of brilliantly colored insects."
The stars of BugFest this year are dragonflies and damselflies, belonging to the insect order Odonata. These ancient creatures are some of the first winged insects to have evolved, about 300 million years ago — long before dinosaurs walked the planet!
Brigham Young University Professor Seth Bybee, an expert on these remarkable creatures, explained how much has been discovered.
“We’ve done a little bit of everything with them," Bybee said. "We've described new species to science that we found...We've created new families of dragonflies as we've gotten to know them a little better. And then we've also studied their evolution. So we've studied their evolution of flight, vision, color."
These insects play a crucial role in our ecosystem.
“They can actually give us a good indication of the health of the environment, both the terrestrial and the aquatic environment, because they're aquatic as nymphs, terrestrial as adults," Bybee explained. "Odonata is really important for us, because it gives us a free ecosystem service in the sense that they eat a lot of the insects that really bother us, right? So the mosquitoes, the biting flies, even some of the wasps and hornets and things like that, these guys will feed on them."
As always, Bills encouraged visitors to bring their appetites.
"There's a lot of different things happening both days," she said. "We will also have our amazing chef Megan, who makes recipes with bugs. Now this isn't just like a gross up factor like, 'Ewww eat a bug!' — she makes like cool things like muffins.”
More information about this weekend's BugFest is here.
