Invertebrates in STEAM: A Q&A with Sara Stevens

Invertebrates in STEAM: Q&A with Sara Stevens, Director of Animal Collections at Butterfly Pavilion   

A: Invertebrates use engineering in a lot of different ways which are also utilized within architecture and engineering design by people. Some examples of this are honeycombs in a beehive. That honeycomb is designed to hold the honey that the bees use for food and resources. It’s also where they grow their larva that eventually pupate and turn into worker bees. This is all done by females within the hive.

A: The mantis shrimp is a really cool example of an animal that has evolved in such a way that they have become very beneficial to engineering due to the way their body works. When it comes to mantis shrimp, their eyes have 16 cones and are so uniquely developed that they’ve allowed researchers to develop a camera that can see cancer cells. The punch for the smashing mantis shrimp allows them to hit with the force of a 22-caliber bullet. Because of that, the recoil and design of their arms that can take this pressure, have researchers looking for ways to design better bulletproof armor and things of that nature. So, the mantis shrimp is a great example of how we can take something from nature and use it to benefit people.

A: Math helps my job in a variety of different ways. We use statistics a lot to help us make scientifically based decisions, not only for our scientific research and understanding if the data that we are collecting is significant or not, but also within our animal collections. So, we look at the longevity of our butterflies. For instance, using our Community Science Interactive within our Wings of the Tropics exhibit, called Butterfly Quest, our guests can report data to us of what our butterflies are doing. We’re then able to turn that into meaningful metrics for us to see how our butterflies are doing. Are we seeing good welfare? Are they living longer than we would have anticipated? We actually had one butterfly that had lived just under 11 months. Usually, we say on average an adult butterfly lives two to four weeks, so being able to have that data turned in, we can then take something that’s kind of qualitative and make it quantitative, which allows us to make good, informed decisions that we can then share with others.

A: A really cool use of technology related to invertebrate conservation is around the Florida Reef Tract Rescue project. This project is responsible for helping to preserve and protect Caribbean coral found in the Florida Reef Tract that was imperiled due to disease. Some really cool technology that’s being utilized for this project is helping to mimic the annual light and moon cycles and temperature cycles of the Caribbean. Using this technology, they’ve been able to spawn this coral in human care to help produce sexually unique offspring, which will be responsible for helping to replant and restore the Florida Reef tract. The coral we have at Butterfly Pavilion will go on to be parents of coral that will be planted there and the work they’ve been able to do to have these spawning events occur in human care would not have been possible without the really incredible controllers and technology that’s been developed.

A: A really cool relationship between invertebrates and art is the historic dye red dye made from cochineal. Cochineal is a scale like invertebrate that is found and was used in a lot of Mayan and Aztec cultures. Cochineal was used as this beautiful vibrant red dye, and to this day, is actually utilized in non-vegan red dye. That’s why it’s non vegan and the relationship of this invertebrate dye was so important because it was able to have a lot of cultural impacts across these very long spanning cultures. So, that’s a really unique way that invertebrate and art kind of came together.