FARGO, N.D. (KFGO) — A North Dakota State University professor emeritus has donated a collection of more than 81,000 insect specimens to the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of Natural History in Washington.
Allan Ashworth, a university distinguished professor emeritus of geosciences, compiled the 81,014-specimen collection over decades alongside fellow geoscience professor Donald Schwert and dozens of NDSU undergraduate and graduate students through the university’s Quaternary Entomology Laboratory.
The collection, primarily made up of beetles, features specimens gathered from both the northern and southern hemispheres, including high-altitude habitats across the Rocky Mountains, the Cascades and New England. Ashworth and Schwert used the insects to analyze ancient environments and reconstruct past climates throughout the Quaternary period, the geological epoch spanning from 2.6 million years ago to the present.
“Right now, I’m working on a site in Ithaca, New York,” Ashworth said, noting that his research on the 42,000-year-old location indicates “it was cold enough in Ithaca… for the ice sheet to have been just a few kilometers away.”
Each specimen in the collection includes detailed labels containing precise location data, ecological information, and the names of the student and faculty collectors.
“Those names will now be in the Smithsonian,” Ashworth said.
The donation brings Ashworth’s connection to the Smithsonian full circle. His relationship with the institution began in 1969, the same year he arrived at NDSU from England, when he visited Washington as a young geologist to identify fossilized insects from a site in Buchanan, North Dakota.
In late July, Floyd Shockley, collections manager for the Smithsonian’s entomology department, traveled to Fargo with three museum specialists to oversee the packing and truck transport of the specimens to Washington, where the collection will reside within the museum’s Coleoptera department.
“To know that the specimens that were part of the QEL collection will have a very long life after I, Don Schwert and students have passed is rewarding,” Ashworth said.
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