 "Photo: Megan VanWaus")
About 69,292 beetles, 17,561 flies and 529 roaches are just a few of the species that call UCF’s collection of arthropods — known as the Bug Closet — their home.
Shawn Kelly, UCF graduate student and manager of the Bug Closet, said that the collection’s goal is to help people from around the world with their research and understand the species in this region.
“Insects are so diverse,” Kelly said. “The collection is an important asset to understand the biodiversity that’s out there.”
Grey-blue beetles as large as river rocks, dark oval beetles as shiny as onyx stones and moths the color of an egg yolk rest inside cabinet drawers waiting to be studied.
Stuart Fullerton, research associate in charge of the arthropod collection, nurtures the core collection of more than 370,000 specimens located in Room 112 on the first floor of the Biological Sciences Building. Yet, there are many more specimens such as ants, beetles and moths waiting to be pinned, labeled and identified.
“We [humans] are outweighed by insects,” Fullerton said.
Arthropods are all around us and humans owe them greatly, Fullerton said. They help humans by eating decayed matter, providing humans with food and even being food.
“Insects are responsible for cleaning up the world, without them we would be covered in crap,” Fullerton said. “They also have more protein per mass than chicken.”
The collection originally started with specimens found on campus with the help of undergraduate and graduate biology students as well as volunteers, Fullerton said. It expanded to specimens found in Orange and Seminole counties, then to the five surrounding counties.
The collection also contains some specimens from California, Mexico, Brazil and other parts of the world. However, the collection’s main goal is to remain regional.
The collection of specimens began when UCF was only 1,100 acres, but now UCF is the third largest university in the country, Fullerton said. Many species have lost their natural habitat with the continuous expansion of the university.
Thirteen new species have been found on campus, Fullerton said. There’s no way to really know how many species are in danger of becoming extinct or how the ecosystem is affected by their loss.
“You can’t keep taking bricks out of a wall. Eventually the wall is going to break,” Fullerton said.
The collection began in 1990, when Fullerton looked at species he had left during his time at UCF in 1978 and decided to do something about it. For the first three years, he and some undergrad biology students worked at his home on the collection. In 1993, Fullerton received the keys for the Bug Closet from David Vickers, who was the chairman of the Biology department.
Today, the collection can be found online also. A database found on the Bug Closet Web site offers the habitat, total count, collector and year of the specimens.
The collection is open to visitors from 8 a.m. to 2 p.m. and always welcomes volunteers that can help fill more cabinets with moths, ants and beetles.
Emily Sassano, who graduated from UCF with a bachelor of science in molecular biology, said that most people don’t know that UCF has an arthropod collection.
“‘Bug Closet’ — I thought, what’s that?” Sassano said. “It sounded interesting.”
Sassano said she learned about the collection through some friends who volunteered. She soon found herself labeling, pinning and identifying hundreds of specimens for the collection.
“It was fun,” Sassano said. “I learned I have more patience than I thought.”
Sassano even started her own small collection from specimens found near her home. She collected specimens such as wasps and ants.
“You see them and you learn about where you live — the diversity of things, the diversity of Florida,” Sassano said.
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