[Entm-beu] Fwd: Insect Fair 2026 – Thank You, Highlights & Booth Competition Results

[Krista Zavala]

Sent on behalf of Veronica Tyts <veronica.tyts at ucr.edu>

Hello everyone!

Last Saturday, we successfully hosted one of our biggest departmental
events – *Insect Fair*!

*Booth competition results:*
Booth A (Biodiversity and Conservation) and Booth B (Urban Entomology)
tied, so this year we have two winners instead of 1st and 2nd place. I’ll
be reaching out to the booth representatives soon. Congratulations!!! 🎉

*Some highlights from this year:*

   - Record number of visitors (over 20,000!)
   - Record number of participating labs (21 total!!!!!!)
   - Ticketed and reorganized Touch-a-Bug (new table layout + structured
   shifts) ran very smoothly
   - We introduced a Q&A panel that people loved! There was not a single
   quiet moment without questions!
   - Collaboration with a digital artist for lab-themed sticker designs
   - More space between booths (finally!)
   - Graduate students chose the featured insect for the pin (honeypot ant
   - even if the final design had some… creative morphology :) )
   - Received headshots the next day after getting them taken (I am still
   shocked!)
   - And amazing weather for a change! Finally, we were not soaking wet or
   grilled!

Now, *I want to thank everyone in the department! *This event would not
have been possible without you!

First, our lab booths: if you look at the attached photo, most visitors are
gathered around the UCR research booths (thanks to Erin Wilson Rankin for
pointing that out and Dong-Hwan Choe for the photos!). That really shows
how central our research was to the event! I am extremely grateful to all
of you who participated in the event!

A huge thank you to the Insect Zoo staff and especially Karthikeyan
Chandrasegaran for ensuring we had all the insects ready for Touch-a-Bug,
helping with signage (special thanks to Jacqueline Holquinn!!!), layout,
and keeping things running smoothly at Touch-a-Bug. Also, thank you to
everyone who donated insects. They made a big difference!

To our Touch-a-Bug volunteers: you made an already popular activity an
absolute hit! Thank you so much! This was honestly the most stressful part
to organize, and I was incredibly relieved to see both sign-ups and the
event itself run so smoothly. Special thanks as well to those who helped
transport insects!

Thank you to our booth competition judges whose names I won't reveal :)
Feel free to share any feedback on the rubric with me!

Thank you to our Q&A panelists! Your expertise and willingness to engage
with the public made a huge impact.

Thank you to everyone involved in the stage activities! Story Time and the
cockroach races were fantastic! And of course, a special shoutout to Joshua
Reger for being an amazing stage host!

A big thank you to our office staff for helping manage all the many (and
often unexpected!) emails and logistics related to the Insect Fair.

I’m very grateful to the EGSA Insect Fair committee. This would have been
much harder without you! Special thanks to:

   - Talli Weiss for organizing Touch-a-Bug tickets
   - Molly Barber for helping with Q&A and helping me make hard decisions :)
   - Mel Thayer, Helen Vo, and Winnifred Opio Aool for making sure we had
   food and drinks, and Blanca Peto for helping with the estimations
   - Molly Barber and Mona Tran for helping to organize sticker sales as
   the EGSA merch committee

And of course, thank you to our former Insect Fair chair, Sarah Schroeder,
for guidance, and to our department chair, Christiane Weirauch, for helping
with logistics, funding, and securing insects.

That’s quite a long list (I hope I didn't forget anyone...), but it really
shows *how much teamwork goes into making this event happen!*

*I’d love to hear your feedback so we can make next year even better!*
Please let me know what worked well and what we should improve.

One more time, THANK YOU, EVERYONE!

All the best,
Insect Fair Chair,
Veronica

*Veronica Tyts*
Ph.D. candidate (she/her) | Heteropteran Systematics Lab
<https://heteroptera.ucr.edu/>
Department of Entomology
University of California, Riverside
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