{"id":38437,"date":"2025-06-06T10:00:23","date_gmt":"2025-06-06T14:00:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/?p=38437"},"modified":"2025-06-23T10:42:58","modified_gmt":"2025-06-23T14:42:58","slug":"bugging-out-mayx-course-has-students-inspecting-worlds-most-populous-land-animals","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/bugging-out-mayx-course-has-students-inspecting-worlds-most-populous-land-animals\/","title":{"rendered":"Bugging out: MayX course has students inspecting world\u2019s most populous land animals"},"content":{"rendered":"

Students donned waders and boots, slung nets over their shoulders and hauled whatever they\u2019d need to pluck their tiny marks from waist-high grasses and muddy riverbanks. They turned each day of Wade Worthen\u2019s<\/a> Insect Diversity MayX class into a small safari.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s just a question of being a little more attentive and looking at a smaller scale than we\u2019re used to. I find their little lives fascinating,\u201d said Worthen, the Rose J. Forgione professor of biology at Furman University. Making up about half of the identified species on the planet, insects are critical to the environment and economy, whether as pollinators or pests.<\/p>\n

\"A

Riley Powell \u201926 and Will James \u201926, catch insect larvae in a seine during an outing to Little Creek on Furman\u2019s campus as part of the Insect Diversity MayX class on May 15. Photo by Nathan Gray, Furman University.<\/p><\/div>\n

In the Upstate of South Carolina, insects are most active in May, making the timing of the three-week summer May Experience<\/a> term perfect. And MayX courses are often a students\u2019 only academic responsibility at the time, Worthen said, offering a chance to dive deeply into a specific topic or experiential learning opportunity.<\/p>\n

\u00a0During lectures, students built a mental library of identifiable insect features and an understanding of the differences of taxonomic orders, families and species. But in the field, students collected 100 insect species, identified them and traded specimens among themselves to complete their collections.<\/p>\n

Whether it\u2019s the slender, iridescent body of a damselfly nymph near a creek or the hard carapace of a large Dynastes beetle, insects are common, but distinct. Finding and identifying them takes patience, sharp observational skills and a little luck.<\/p>\n

\u201cInsects are naturally trying to get away from you, so when someone makes a good catch with a net or spots something unusual it\u2019s common for the students to show it off and celebrate,\u201d Worthen said.<\/p>\n

\"An

Wade Worthen, professor of biology, left, helps Riley Powell \u201926, right, and Thomas Buxton \u201927, middle, collect insects at the Blue Wall Preserve during the Insect Diversity MayX on June 3. Photo by Nathan Gray, Furman University<\/p><\/div>\n

Students sifted through silt at Little Creek in search of insect larvae and snatched flying and crawling insects with nets and collection jars at the Blue Wall Preserve<\/a>, protected land in the Blue Ridge Mountains less than an hour from campus. They set up black light bulbs to attract nocturnal insects after dark. Even at this small scale, there\u2019s a thrill to the chase.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt gives them the opportunity to be inventive and resourceful. It\u2019s neat seeing them so interested and working together in the lab to get familiar with these little lives,\u201d Worthen said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Students learn to identify insects by catching them in the wild and building their own collection in this summer-term course.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":401,"featured_media":38353,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[19,54],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-38437","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-biology","category-may-experience"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38437","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/401"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=38437"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38437\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":38440,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38437\/revisions\/38440"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/38353"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=38437"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=38437"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=38437"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}