By Matt Yunik, Public Education, Entomological Society of Manitoba
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After a slow start, I can finally say that spring is in the air here in Manitoba. Summer students have started their work in the various labs and grad students are chomping at the bit to get back into the field. After the devastating flooding followed by unquenchable drought of last year, this field season shows promise for being more successful.
Memorial in the J.B. Wallis and R.E. Roughley Museum of Entomology, with a case of Dr. Roughley’s Dytiscid beetles.
The entomology museum here at the University of Manitoba has recently undergone some transformations. A modest but fitting re-dedication ceremony was held on March 27th for our newly named J.B. Wallis/R.E. Roughley Museum of Entomology. Dr. Roughley had always been a big promoter of the museum, earning it the status of being the largest insect museum in Western Canada and the first bar-coded database system for entomological collections in Canada.
The department’s Graduate Student Association, with the assistance of the current curator Dr. Barb Sharanowski, has secured funding and are assembling a stereoscope with digital imaging system that will provide stellar images that will be shown on later blog posts.
Finally, there are two points of interest to report from the ESM front. On April 18th the ESM held our new member social. Dinner and drinks were served with admission covered for all new members of the society. I personally enjoyed meeting other newcomers while spending time with some of the more senior members.
Also, the ESM youth encouragement and public awareness team is getting ramped up for the multitude of presentations through the summer months. We typically conduct over 60 presentations a year, the majority of which are for summer youth camps. It will be exciting to see how the influx of new faces in the society will add to these presentations.