Assistant Professor of Biology Sebastian Velez, Ph.D., recently took a group of students in his Entomology class to visit Harvard University’s beetle collections at its Museum of Comparative Zoology.
The visit was part of WSU’s efforts to forge scientific collaborations with other Massachusetts institutions.
Students met with Phil Perkins, collections manager, and Rachel Hawkins, assistant collections manager. They were very impressed by many of the specimens Hawkins showed them, including examples of butterflies mimicking dead leaves.
“Natural history is very alive today,” Hawkins told the students. “We are making history every day. The pace of species descriptions has never been as accelerated as it is today.”
Submitted by Sebastian Velez