 Radio Script 2001
Archiving Alaska's Insects
STORY: Jim Kruse owes his interest in butterflies to his first-grade teacher. KRUSE: "I tend to blame my first-grade teacher. She used to bring in butterfly nets and monarch caterpillars and we'd observe them as kids and watch them turn into butterflies. It was a good time, and neat stuff. I pretty quickly became interested in the diversity." His fascination with insects, especially the ones that fly, became deeper as he grew up. Whenever he got the chance, he'd roam nearby woods and fields—net in hand—looking for a butterfly to add to his collection. Today, he has 10,000 butterflies and moths in his personal collection. His pursuit of these winged beauties lasted even through a stint in the U.S. Navy, where his hobby sometimes received strange looks from his buddies. KRUSE: "It's OK when you're a kid. But when people saw an adult male walking around with a butterfly net, they really kind of wondered." After military service, Jim Kruse earned a doctorate degree in the study of insects, called entomology, at the University of California, Berkeley. Recently, Jim Kruse was named curator of entomology at the University of Alaska Museum in Fairbanks, Alaska. His first task: to sort out the museum's new collection of more than 100,000 insect specimens that are a part of the museum's Arctic Archival Observatory. KRUSE: "My job is generally to get the collection in shape here at the museum. It's a brand-new collection. Everything that I'm working on here is a new donation. Right now it's a large collection of aquatics, things like mosquitoes and black flies, but also mayflies and stone flies." As you might expect, butterflies and moths are Kruse's forte. He says that while much is known about Alaska's 83 species of butterflies, he estimates there may be as many as 800 to 1,000 species of moths in the state, of which only 200 or so have been identified. KRUSE: "I see the surprise on people's faces when you tell them how many insects there really are. The common perception is that mosquitoes and black flies are pretty much the only things up here. But actually, for the latitude, Alaska is surprisingly diverse. There are a lot of different habitat types. You have Arctic tundra versus boreal forests, versus alpine regions, and of course waterways and things." And here's something else interesting about moths and butterflies. Many of us think of butterflies as colorful, and moths as their ugly siblings. Kruse says that's not the case in Alaska. KRUSE: "One of the common ways to tell moths from butterflies, especially down in more southerly latitudes, is that moths are kind of drab and they fly at night, and butterflies are pretty and they fly during the day. Well, as you may notice, up here in the summer, it's light much more often. You tend to have a very large number of day-flying moths, which are every bit as pretty if not prettier. A lot of the moths are very beautiful with orange and yellow, with contrasting black and white and orange." Along with chronicling the museum's insect collection, Jim Kruse will help scientists fill in the gaps in Alaska's bug knowledge. He's especially interested in learning more about the circumpolar distribution of moths and butterflies. He also plans to get into Alaska's backcountry to look for new, as yet unidentified insect species, and to begin research on such topics as the impact of climate warming on the state's insects. OUTRO: This is Arctic Science Journeys Radio, a production of the Alaska Sea Grant Program and the University of Alaska Fairbanks. I'm Doug Schneider. Audio version and related Web sites Thanks to the following individual for help preparing this script:
Jim Kruse, curator of entomology Arctic Science Journeys is a radio service highlighting science, culture, and the environment of the circumpolar north. Produced by the Alaska Sea Grant College Program and the University of Alaska Fairbanks.
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