Inaugural Notre Dame InsectFest celebrates insect research, biodiversity, and conservation

This past Friday, we hosted the first-ever University of Notre Dame InsectFest to celebrate insect research, biodiversity, and conservation in the South Bend area. Dr. Lee Rafuse Haines and I first pitched this festival a year-and-a-half ago to highlight the wonderful, growing community of entomologists and insect enthusiasts in and around Notre Dame. Seeing this festival come to fruition was absolutely a dream come true!

For this inaugural festival, we teamed up with Football Fridays at the Eck Visitors Center to welcome visitors to campus for the Notre Dame-Stanford football game. It was a beautiful afternoon of music, merriment, and all things arthropod. We had hundreds of visitors from at least thirteen states (from New York to California, and Georgia to Minnesota) and three countries!

Since this first festival happened on a weekday, I wanted to make sure that our wonderful presenters were highlighted to make sure we got the word out about our lovely insect community! If you have any questions on insects, please feel free to email bugascientist@nd.edu and an entomologist from Notre Dame will be happy to try and answer.

So, why is there an insect festival at the University of Notre Dame?

The university has a rich and storied history intertwined with local biodiversity and disease vectors. We took a look back and highlighted some of the major insect moments in our history: the founding of the Museum of Biodiversity, malaria control efforts giving us ND's iconic yellow bricks (thank you to ND architect Dan Cook for lending us some of the actual bricks to display), the creation of the University of Notre Dame Environmental Research Center, the world famous Vector Biology Laboratory, the restoration and study of Juday Creek, and the establishment of the Eck Institute for Global Health. These are just a few moments from 183 years of history, but the real stars of InsectFest were the researchers showcasing how they are continuing this legacy today!

The Museum of Biodiversity was founded in 1844 and is one of the university's greatest treasures (visit the public exhibits in Jordan Hall anytime, and visit their open houses on football weekends). The museum is curated by Dr. Joanna Larson, who, with the assistance of a wonderful team of undergraduates, created two tables for InsectFest!

Their displays showcased insect orders, the amazing lepidopteran collections, and the insect collections on campus and around South Bend that undergraduate biology students have the opportunity to take part in through their courses.

Cynthia Katsarelis and Lee Haines presented their very exciting entomological multimedia project, Symphonic Wings. Symphonic Wings brings together entomologists, composers, conductors, and filmmakers to create music and film that brings light to the hidden world of insects. The first performance of the project will be on April 3, 2027 at ND's Leighton Concert Hall (tickets available now).

Members of the Acosta Serrano Lab (Kris Hawkins, Stephanie Morgan, Katelyn Fealy, and Caterine Potes) presented their work on insect vectors of human disease, such as mosquitoes and sand flies. They brought live insects, magnified photos, and scopes, and Stephanie even made a wonderful comic book to showcase ND research!

We also had a wonderful table discussing the perils of ticks (from Jalynn Murray, Akilah Stewart, and Brett Davis). Tick-borne diseases are the most prevalent vector-borne diseases in the United States, and St. Joseph County has some of the highest Lyme disease pathogen prevalence in the state of Indiana. These presenters provided education on identifying, finding, and preventing common and emerging ticks in the area. Akilah also displayed some of her amazing vector paintings, one of which is pictured above!

Andrew Lupinski of the Feder Lab shared the lab's work on flies from the genus, Rhagoletis. The Feder Lab conducts amazing evolutionary biology research looking at how new species of flies have evolved to track specific fruits throughout the US over the last 150 years. Andrew showcased an array of species with their fruits and had a find and sort their pupae.

Notre Dame Sustainability presented their current initiatives on campus to support native insect biodiversity. They also created a campus map of where you can find their initiatives, as well as where you can find the Rhagoletis host trees that the Feder Lab studies. We hope you are able to take the tour and see campus with a new ecological and entomological appreciation!

Finally, Anna Kelly, a psychology undergraduate student here at Notre Dame, made amazing art for the festival. Anna's artwork can be viewed on Instagram (@annakelly.art).

Overall, it was incredible to see such passion and engagement for insects from both on campus groups and visitors from all around the world! If you were able to join us, thank you so much. I really hope you had a wonderful time and learned something new about the hidden world of insects!

Patrick Heffernan is a PhD candidate at the University of Notre Dame studying the socio-ecology of vector-borne diseases. Prior to Notre Dame, he studied Ecology & Evolutionary Biology and Philosophy at CU Boulder, where he was also the president of Literary Buffs, the English department's creative writing club. If you're interested in connecting, please do so on LinkedIn or Bluesky.

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