Post written by Nancy Miorelli and Joe Ballenger
As Ask an Entomologist has grown, we’re excited to have had a few opportunities to collaborate with some really cool people. Nancy and Joe wanted to make a post to cue folks into some of these opportunities.
1)CCD Podcast
Joe, along with a friend of his, will be doing the MythWits podcast on April 6th. The topic will be about CCD, which he’s written extensively about on other websites…namely Biofortified. You can read what he’s written in the past here, here and here.
Joining Joe will be Doug Yanega, a senior Museum Scientist at UC Riverside who studies bees. You can read what he’s written on the topic here.
What’s the buzz on bees?
Find out April 6th!
PC: Michael Palmer (CC by SA 4.0)
2) Question of the Month
We’re pleased to announce a Question of the Month contest, which we’re running in conjunction with Entomology Today. Entomology Today is the official blog of the Entomological Society of America, of which both Nancy and Joe are members.
Once a month, we’ll choose a question we think is particularly interesting and the answer will appear in Entomology Today a week before it appears on this blog. It’s a pretty cool opportunity, and one we hope will bring broader exposure to our mission with this site.
3) #KidQuestions
We’ve had a lot of questions about insects from parents and teachers. A lot of these questions are really good, so we would like to do another theme month for the month of May to focus on these questions. The posts in May will center around questions asked by kids, which we’ll call #kidquestions.
If your kid has a question about insects, simply contact us and mention the kid’s age. As always, we’ll respect any requests for anonymity.
Ask your kids! Ask your students! Ask your friends kids what they want to know about bugs! #KidsQuestions
4)Bug Pics on Instagram
We’ve set up an instagram account at BugQuestions, where we’ll take pictures of bugs wherever we are! Follow us to get the lowdown on some awesome bugs and behaviors. We’ll probably end up answering questions there too depending on the nature of the question.
Follow us to get lots of bug pictures!
Thanks!!
So we hope that you guys are as excited as we are for the opportunity to expand beyond our site. We’re always working on new stuff, and when stuff outside of AaE comes up…we’ll post an announcement on the blog!
We’re totally open to suggestions too so continue to email, tweet, and tag us! We’re only possible because of you and we appreciate all your involvement and support!
Ask an Entomologist 
hi my name is Sebastian and i’m 11 years old and my carer found a stick insect on her shed but I have know idea what sort it is at first we thought it was a titan stick insect but its upper thorax didn’t have spots it does however have 2 small parallel bumps and it has patches of a rosy pink and its back legs have spicks which look like thorn it is female and her antenna are quite thick and are short i’m not sure is she’s a nymph or an adult she likes to eat paper bark leaves.
P.S. I love insects and it is my dream to become an entomologist.
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Sebastian…I’m glad you love bugs and want to become an entomologist.
If you can show us a picture of the stick insect, we might be able to get it identified. Unfortunately, without a picture or a location…there’s not much we can do.
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oh P.S. can I be an admin?
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Unfortunately, we’re not taking on new admins at the moment. However, there’s a number of groups you can join to meet some other insect scientists.
The best one would be http://www.bugguide.net. This site is American, and unfortunately I’m not sure if that’s where you’re from. A group with a more international focus is The Entomology Group on Facebook.
Also, you can always shoot us an email if there’s something you’d like to ask. 🙂
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