Bethany Hunt's Summer Research

Bethany Hunt loves Entomology. She has been collecting, pinning and identifying insects for years and last year began working in our lab as a summer student researcher. Bethany contributes to several of the projects we have going on, including the buckeye lady beetle blitz. When volunteers send samples back to the lab, Bethany examines their sticky card and data sheet to check for errors and enters all the data. She also identifies numerous other beneficial insects on each card, in addition to the lady beetles.

This summer, Bethany also conducted a study examining parasitism rates of native and exotic lady beetles. Lady beetles are attacked by a the wasp parasitoid Dinocampus coccinellae. Bethany is examining whether parasitism rates of native lady beetles are affected by the abundance of exotic lady beetles present. She is examining this by measuring the diversity and abundance of exotic and native lady beetles in 24 grassland, soybean and alfalfa field sites across Ohio. From each site she uses a sweep net to collect lady beetles and determine their abundance. She places each lady beetle in a petri dish and monitors it for 28 days to determine if a parasitoid emerges from the beetle.

As you can see from the pictures, she has quite a collection of beetles at this point!!