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OSU'S ARTHROPOD COLLECTION IS THE
LARGEST ENTOMOLOGICAL RESEARCH
COLLECTION IN THE PACIFIC NORTHWEST
OREGON STATE GETS ITS BUG COLLECTION IN ORDER Story by Ben Ricker / Photos by Trask Bedortha
n a dark corner of Cordley Hall on the edge of
Oregon State University campus, an unsorted knot
of dead ants floats preserved in a clear solution.
For all anyone knows, the thumb-sized vial could
hold an undiscovered species or a clue to some
future entomological breakthrough.
As curator of OSU’s arthropod collection, Chris
Marshall is in charge of almost three million dead bugs, as
well as some spiders and mollusks.
On a shelf behind Marshall rests a titan beetle bigger
than a toddler’s shoe: “Everyone wants to see these,” he
says. Drawers and drawers full of little grey dipteras
(flies), though, “you have to be a serious bug nerd to
appreciate.”
When he took over OSU’s collection 10 years ago, the
bug museum was on the verge of collapse. “It looked like
someone’s garage,” he says.
Rows and rows of clean, state-of-the-art museum
cabinets now protect a vast library of bugs pinned carefully
in place under glass.
Some specimens wait patiently dead in old coffee cans
and Tupperware to be cataloged. “It’s more work than you
can possibly do, ” he says.
Next to the world famous California Academy of
Sciences, OSU has the best butterfly collection on the
West Coast, Marshall says. Its wasp holdings are “globally
I
important,” rivaling those housed by the Smithsonian
Institute.
“Our mite collection is fifth in the world,” he adds,
though “we try to avoid pissing contests because we don’t
win.”
Marshall waxes almost poetically, talking about science
and its current bind: Today’s college kids are drawn to the
romance of the sciences, he says, but there isn’t much
room for that in today’s classroom or the professional
world that follows.
He meets a lot of eager science students who come to
him and say, “I love bugs.” He doesn’t for a second doubt
their sincerity, but he wonders if they’re cut out for the
slow, modern technical approach to entomology.
Science careers in the new millennia perhaps aren’t as
sexy as they once were, particularly those available to
biology grads, and Marshall worries student verve gets
blunted once they realize there isn’t as much use for
fieldwork anymore and scant promise of any thrilling
eureka moments ahead.
A shaggy student sits nearby at a slate-topped lab table,
sorting and cataloging a box of mites. Many times smaller
than pinheads, the little creatures sit glued to clear plastic
slides. He picks each one out of the box and examines it
closely before scratching some indecipherable notes on
paper and filing them away in their proper place.
'SERIOUS BUG NERD' CHRIS MARSHALL SAYS OSU'S WASP COLLECTION
RIVALS THE SMITHSONIAN'S
Early in Marshall’s entomological studies, he envisioned
for himself an outdoorsy future, all jungles, bug nets and
killing jars. But the halcyon Jean-Henri Fabre days of
crouching over a backyard anthill, recording your
observations in a notebook and publishing them in
scientific journals, are long over.
Taxonomy in 2016 can be thankless work that pushes
fields of biology forward at a glacial pace.
But that makes it no less important.
“A world without taxonomists,” he says, “can’t describe
or name species. Discovering a new species is a lot of
work. You don’t just walk out in the field and discover that
a species is new.”
Without taxonomy, he adds, we’d be at a loss to protect
threatened or endangered species.
Marshall sometimes wonders if natural science courses
would fit better in the OSU College of Liberal Arts.
“Writers and artists face a lot of the same problems,”
Marshall says, “but the sciences are expected to be more
practical.”
Science may be losing its whiz-bang appeal, but
Marshall says youngsters are rediscovering the natural
sciences.
When asked what gives him that idea, Marshall says: “I
don’t know. Maybe it’s just one of those things I hope is
true.”
MARSHALL SAYS WHEN IT COMES TO NATURAL HISTORY, THE VAST MAJORITY OF
WHAT'S KNOWN COMES FROM STUDYING MUSEUM COLLECTIONS
eugeneweekly.com • October 13, 2016
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