Tucked away in the Museum of Texas Tech University, past a hallway lined with dozens of taxidermy mammals, most of them mounted heads, and across from a locked door, behind which are tanks of liquid nitrogen containing ‘genetic resources,’ is the Invertebrate Zoology Collection.
The curator of invertebrate zoology at the Natural Science Research Laboratory Dr. Jennifer Girón stood in front of an open cabinet, lined with jars of spiders, scorpions, and other creepy crawlies. In her hands was the largest of the jars, filled about two thirds of the way with dead tarantulas, individually wrapped like candies.
“If we open this jar,” she lowered her voice as she spoke, “tons of demons are going to come out, just because it smells so bad. Dead spiders, for many years, it's not something you want to get a whiff of.”
These tarantulas are from Brazil. They ended up here in Lubbock after being confiscated from someone selling them illegally. They were not preserved correctly, which is why they’re shriveled up, as opposed to their properly preserved counterparts, held in an alcohol solution. This incorrect preservation also accounts for the smell.
The Natural Science Research Laboratory, or NSRL, is one of six divisions of the museum. It is home to the genetic resource collection, a collection of local birds, a collection of mammals, and – the largest collection, with about 4.5 million specimens – the invertebrates.
The Invertebrate Zoology Collection was originally established in the 1970s, back when Texas Tech University had a Department of Entomology. The collection passed from curator to curator, until 2015, when Girón’s predecessor retired.
“No one could use it,” Girón recalled. “If people reached out to us for a loan, no one would know where to find anything, really, because this particular unit is more focused on the mammals… So for the mammals, they could find anything, and even extra stuff. But for the invertebrates, that's like a black hole. We don't know how to access any of that.”
Girón joined the NSRL as a volunteer in 2018, and began the process of reactivating the collection. It returned to actively sending loans in 2021.
Girón was hired as acting collections manager and research aide of the museum in 2020 and became the full time curator in September 2023. She has been recruiting students and volunteers to help with the collection.
In addition to the experience and getting paid for their work, undergraduate students who work with the collection have the opportunity to present at a research conference on their projects.
Some projects that students and volunteers undertake come from the personal interest that people take in them.
“She started recording all the creatures that were crawling around in her garden,” Girón said of one volunteer. “From that, she learned how to identify flower flies. And so the project that she worked on here was identifying, curating and data basing all our flower flies. Now, we do have the largest collection of digitized hoverflies in Texas, at least.”
Girón herself is currently working with other researchers in writing a book chapter about her own specialty: weevils.
One of the co-authors with whom Girón is collaborating is Lourdes Chamorro, the curator of weevils at the Smithsonian Institution.
“She has access to a massive collection of things,” Girón said. “And in a meeting two weeks ago, she was like, ‘I don't have specimens of this particular genus’ and I'm like, ‘We do have them.’ So we can photograph them and share that information with whoever needs it. And that's why having the database that we have that supports the fact that you can add photos to your records is extremely useful.”
While the NSRL has online databases, which researchers can access and use to request information, that only accounts for the specimens that have been processed and cataloged. Of the 4.5 million specimens, about one million have been processed and labeled. And many of those remaining three and a half million are sitting in what Girón refers to as ‘soups.’ Collections of bugs captured in bulk and preserved in alcohol until they can be processed.
Another current project at the NSRL is funded by the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department. Along with Dr. Scott Longing, an Associate Professor of Entomology with the Texas Tech University Department of Plant and Soil Science, the team is databasing bees from agricultural ecosystems.
”He's been collecting bees in agricultural ecosystems in this region since 2015,” Girón explained. “So when we started the project, he would have a bunch of specimens in jars. Essentially soups, but smaller soups. So the project has been mounting these specimens, getting everything labeled, getting everything databased, so that that information is more readily available.”
While honeybees are a popular insect, Girón said they do not need protection like other bees, such as certain species of bumblebees. Folks in Lubbock can help local bumblebee populations through pollinator-friendly gardens with native plants.
With a few exceptions like honeybees and butterflies, Girón said people tend to feel less connected to insects, arachnids, arthropods, mites, and parasites, than with the mammals and birds in the other collections.
One way people can familiarize themselves with bugs outside of the drawers, jars, and slides, is just downstairs from the Laboratory.
The Museum of Texas Tech is currently exhibiting a project called Microsculpture, showcasing closeup images of bugs, which Girón and her team helped supplement, with glass cases showing specimens from the collection similar to those found on the prints.
Girón experienced first-hand how seeing the specimens life-sized and in-person can help people to feel more comfortable about bugs when the display was being prepared by the museum’s exhibits team.
“One of the students that was in the team was like, ‘That one is so terrifying. Look at those claws and all these things. Like, no, I don't even – I cannot even look at it.’ And I'm like,” Girón walked over to the glass case and pointed at the preserved specimen. “‘Are you scared of this thing?’ And he's like, ‘Oh, they're not that scary.’ Because they are not big.”
Without those like dung beetles, Girón said people would be overrun with unprocessed waste. Without wasps and spiders acting as pest control, other insects would eat all the crops. And without pollinators, there wouldn’t be any food in the first place.
“Essentially entire civilizations would collapse if insects were not there,” Girón said.
She said that when it comes to the common household insects people tend to think of as disgusting, we have no one to blame but ourselves.
“Those are the ones that live with us,” Girón said. “The things that live in forests or in the fields or in other places. Those are the creatures that are contributing to the ecosystems. And the reason why we have cockroaches and flies and things like that in our houses is because our own habits. So these things get attracted. The only thing that they are doing is trying to find – as we are – trying to find food, trying to find shelter.”
In addition to their critical ecological importance and the potential for development in fields like medicine, Girón said bugs are simply fascinating.
“But if we kill them all,” she began, “if we destroy their environment, they are not going to be there, and we are not going to learn those things. So if we protect them, then there's a better chance that we get to learn more about what they do, and what can we use them for, if that's the goal. But for me in particular, they are just intriguing. There's so many things to learn, like, just look at them. Just look at them!”
The Microsculpture exhibit will be at the Museum of Texas Tech University through the end of the semester. The Invertebrate Collection is accepting volunteers and students for work studies. And the bugs aren’t going anywhere.
