Dr. Steven Alm is the director of the URI Bee Lab. He received his bachelor’s of science
degree in 1976 from the State University of New York College of Environmental Science and Forestry in Syracuse. He earned his master’s degree from the same college in 1979 and was awarded a doctorate in 1985 from The Ohio State University.
Alm, a professor at the University of Rhode Island, discusses collecting insects and how to pin them. He also shares information about the lab’s insect collection.
Here is a conversation with Alm. The full interview can be found here.
Dr. Steven Alm calls insects “nature’s art.” Eighty percent of all animals are insects, making them the most numerous group of animals on the planet.
They are “like a flower to someone who likes flowers,” he says. “It’s just beautiful.”
“One of my favorite things about insects is that it’s kind of like you get a little insight into a whole different universe,” said Casey Johnson, a former student who is now a researcher at the URI Bee Lab.
Alm said insects are important to birds, reptiles and amphibians in the overall food chain. Hunting for insects and collecting them can be fun. Few will harm humans, but researchers can read about which ones might not be safe to handle.
There is a process for collecting insects.
“We do the collecting usually in the fall, and most insects are not going to make it through the winter, Alm says. “We use insect pins that do not rust. You pin right through the thorax.”
And there are plenty of insects to go around.
“There’s about a million named insects at this point,” Alm says. “Some figure at least another million that we haven’t even discovered yet.
“That’s why we do the collection.”
