Maryland Entomology Students Compete In Linnaean Games Final Tournament 11/16/08
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by Susan Johnson
The University of Maryland’s first-ever Linnaean Games team competed this week at the Entomological Society of America’s (ESA) national Linnaean Games tournament in Reno, Nevada. Team members Akito Kawahara, Julie Hébert, Gwen Shlichta, Bob Smith and alternate Lauren Culler are all current or recent students in the Entomology Department at Maryland.
The Linnaean Games, named after the Swedish naturalist Carl Linneaus, are a chance for graduate students to show off their knowledge of all things entomological. No insect-related fact is too obscure. Categories range from “Name that bug!” to questions on insect-related art, to the much-hated “Name that past ESA president.”
The underdog UMD team faced up against the powerhouse North Carolina State University team, which has done quite well in the Linnaean Games in the past. Akito won the first point of the game for the UMD team by correctly identifying a picture of a larval Arctiid, with its food plant, milkweed.
However, NC State quickly pulled ahead. UMD was able to stay competitive with the NC State team throughout most of the game, as the contestants grappled with quotes from poetry (Ogden Nash’s “Bee and Me”), tried to remember which insect cells sheath neuronal axons (glial cells), and attempted to explain what aphids make honeydew for.
NC State finally entrenched itself in the lead, and was ahead of UMD 90-40 by question 15. Despite botching of the final question of the game, “What is the common and familiar name of the radioactive spider that turned Peter Parker into Spiderman?”* NC State won, and UMD was eliminated from the tournament.
“I thought the team did really well,” said Akito. “It was our first time competing nationally so we did our best with what we had.”
His teammate Julie agreed. “I think we did pretty well for a first-time team that didn’t study as much as some other teams,” she said.
She added, “I’m just disappointed that they didn’t include the ‘Name that frass!’ category from last year.” (For the non-entomologist, “frass” is insect poop.)
Bob, the UMD team captain, is already looking ahead to next year’s competition.
“If anyone wants to join the team, now’s the time to let me know. We have to start getting ready for Eastern Branch,” said Bob, referring to the spring meeting of the regional chapter of ESA to which Maryland belongs. The regional ESA meetings hold the qualifying matches for the national Linnaean Games.
The team’s mission is more about having fun and promoting the department than it is about memorizing bug facts, explained Bob. In fact, one of the bylaws of the team is that if a team member starts to take it too seriously, he or she must wear an oversized foam novelty cowboy hat.
The team also tries to have fun at practices too. According to Akito, their plan for getting ready for next year’s competitions is “maybe to study on Fridays over beer.” So if you see a group of people at a bar in downtown College Park wearing silly hats and discussing the finer details of frass over a round of lager, raise your glass to them. They just might be the champions of the next Entomological Society of America Linnaean Games.
--Read the Smithsonian Magazine article about the Linnaean Games.
If you’re a University of Maryland student interested in bugs, beer, silly hats, and trivia, email Bob Smith at rsmith9 at umd dot edu.
*For the curious, Peter Parker was bitten by the common house spider, of the family Theridiidae. Not the black widow, as the contestants guessed.
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