Museum of Southwestern Biology Field Trip

by Brandt Magic

For the second year in a row, the Museum of Southwestern Biology at UNM (http://msb.unm.edu/ ) welcomed Sandoval Extension Master Gardener interns to view their world-class insect collection. The museum’s Arthropod collection is the most extensive in the southwest and includes a large number of the over 20,000 describe species in New Mexico.

Dr. David Lightfoot, collection manager, spoke about the science of entomology (the study of insects). He talked about how he has worked at the museum studying insects and for Fish and Game doing management programs. He also shared his own personal experience as a life-long gardener, and his philosophy of minimizing human impact on insect populations.

Special guest speaker for the day was Kaitlin Haase of the New Mexico Xerces Society for Invertebrate Conservation (https://www.xerces.org/). She addressed how gardeners can help pollinators through plant selection and best practices in their gardens. She shared Xerces Society plant lists and other conservation publications. Kaitlin’s talk followed her Canvas based lecture on pollinators, a new addition to the NMSU Master Gardener program.