{"id":17162,"date":"2016-05-09T15:17:34","date_gmt":"2016-05-09T19:17:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news.cos.ucf.edu\/?p=17162"},"modified":"2024-05-09T16:41:52","modified_gmt":"2024-05-09T20:41:52","slug":"ucf-biology-professor-explores-mysteries-insect-life","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sciences.ucf.edu\/news\/ucf-biology-professor-explores-mysteries-insect-life\/","title":{"rendered":"UCF Biology Professor Explores Mysteries of Insect Life"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

By Jonathan Gabriel<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Monday, May 9, 2016<\/p>\n\n\n

\n
\"Barbara<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

The first time biology associate professor Barb Sharanowski, Ph.D., <\/a>encountered insects, they terrified her.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWhen I was a kid in Ontario, Canada, my older brother used to throw them at me \u2013 gosh, it was just basically torture,\u201d she said. \u201cBut as I grew older I overcame that fear, and curiosity took hold. I learned that they were actually the best things in the world.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

She grew up watching Quincy, M.E.<\/em>, a 1970s medical-mystery TV drama akin to \u201cold-school CSI<\/em>,<\/em>\u201d wanting to become a forensic pathologist like the show\u2019s protagonist. But she soon discovered she could make a career out of her love of bugs and solving mysteries. She would \u201cstill be like Quincy, just in a more Indiana Jones <\/em>way.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sharanowski arrived at UCF last fall after a stint at the University of Manitoba where she taught about her favorite bug: wasps. Here she teaches, conducts research and oversees the UCF Collection of Arthropods<\/a>, commonly referred to as the Bug Closet.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The closet is a unique 1,800-square-foot research facility with over 510,000 insect specimens in the Biological Sciences building. The Bug Closet began in 1993 thanks to a volunteer who spent countless hours building the collection.   It was housed in a closet-sized space, which led to the nickname. Over time, the collection grew exponentially as insects from Central Florida were gathered and catalogued. Many are rare, such as Lissohypnus fullertoni<\/em>, a species of rove beetle, and Acroceridae<\/em>, the spider fly. The closet is open to scientists around the world and tours are available to the public<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe collection here is fantastic,\u201d she said. \u201cIt\u2019s lovely. I got really excited when I interviewed here and I saw all the wasps \u2013 I was, like, \u2018yayyy!<\/em>\u2019\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Her specialty is a family of parasitic wasps called Braconidae<\/em>. She\u2019s participated in collection trips to Peru, Australia and Honduras, identifying new species. Aside from teaching students about these amazing creatures, the field work is what really drives her.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThey\u2019re super diverse, more diverse than you can possibly imagine,\u201d she said. \u201cThere are more than 19,000 species in the family of wasps I study \u2013 more than all mammals, fish, birds and reptiles combined.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And there are lots of reasons to study wasps, beyond knowing the original story of Marvel\u2019s Wasp character.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Some species inject a type of virus to control the behavior of other insects, causing them, for example, to protect the wasp from danger with little regard for the other insects\u2019 own safety.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cSome time in evolutionary history, the virus became integrated into the wasp\u2019s genome. It\u2019s really creepy and cool stuff,\u201d she said. \u201cThe whole movie Alien <\/em>is based off of parasitic wasps. How did these wasps evolve to have this ability? That\u2019s one of the questions I\u2019m trying to figure out.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sharanowski is also developing a mobile field guide app that will help nonexperts in the agricultural industry accurately identify pests attacking their crops. The app would tie into the Bug Closet to help with identifying creatures found in the field. The app is in beta testing with an expected 2018 release date.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There are many other potential applications for the app.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIn the future I could see the app being used in forensic situations, where you need people who aren\u2019t fully trained in entomology to be able to identify insects properly, or even in ecotourism,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

View original story here. <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Jonathan Gabriel Monday, May 9, 2016 The first time biology associate professor Barb Sharanowski, Ph.D., encountered insects, they terrified her. \u201cWhen I was a kid in Ontario, Canada, my older brother used to throw them at me \u2013 gosh, it was just basically torture,\u201d she said. \u201cBut as I grew older I overcame that […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":120,"featured_media":17164,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[34,38,39,13,25,28,29],"tags":[384,388,434,3491,3503,3535],"class_list":["post-17162","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-biology-departments","category-breaking-news","category-faculty-news","category-news","category-staff-news","category-top-news","category-ucf-news","tag-barb-sharanowski","tag-barbara-sharanowski","tag-biological-sciences-building","tag-ucf-bug-closet","tag-ucf-collection-of-arthropods","tag-ucf-department-of-biology"],"yoast_head":"\nUCF Biology Professor Explores Mysteries of Insect Life - 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