INQUIRING MINDS
SJSU’s Entomology Museum Helps Decode California’s Estimated 100,000 Insect Species
By Rhoda Shapiro Photography by Robert C. Bain
Tucked away on the second floor of San José State’s Duncan Hall is a little-known treasure known as the J. Gordon Edwards Entomology Museum. The space is home to a massive collection of more than half a million insect specimens, some of which are roughly 100 years old.
It is believed that the late SJSU Professor of Biology Carl Duncan helped to establish the museum decades ago. An entomologist himself, Duncan began working at SJSU in 1922 and started accumulating specimens from his own collection, which eventually evolved into the museum collection.
“Carl Duncan was one of the first members of the biology department,” says Fredrick Larabee, an assistant professor of biological sciences who also serves as the museum director. “He was an entomologist who was interested in yellowjackets.”
Last year, SJSU started collaborating with the California Insect Barcoding Initiative, an ambitious state-funded project that aims to catalog all of the insect species in California by way of DNA sequencing, which involves either removing a leg from a specimen or soaking the specimen in a solution in order to extract bits of DNA from it. The project has been ongoing for the past three years and is being led by the California Academy of Sciences, the California Institute for Biodiversity and the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County.
“When people have done more systematic broad studies, and have looked at a lot of different species, they’re seeing the same patterns — their abundance, the total number of individuals in ecosystems, are crashing over the last few decades. That’s really alarming when you think of the importance of insects as the base of each ecosystem. So many things eat insects and so many of them are pollinators. Insects are responsible for most ecosystems chugging along and so it sort of adds additional urgency to biodiversity studies.”
— Fredrick Larabee
Since SJSU has a regional collection, its specimens are making valuable contributions to the project. The robust collection that exists at the entomology museum is the result of collecting excursions that have been made by faculty, staff, students, alumni and volunteers over many decades.
“The collection is hyper-local,” says Larabee. “Most of the collections are from city parks in San José. We have old records of people going out to Alum Rock Park on collecting trips.”
A century ago, the entomology circle at SJSU was vibrant and active. In the 1920s, an entomology club started up for students. Many of them would come together to collect insects and share their findings with one another. But the spark for the topic died down, and the club ended in 2003.
Since he started teaching at SJSU four years ago, Larabee has worked to revive the entomology museum, which was named after the late SJSU professor and entomologist J. Gordon Edwards.
“Since I got here, I’ve been working to get things back up and running,” says Larabee. “There’s been a period of time when there wasn’t a lot of active curation and research going on in the museum.”
Students in the Entomology 101 class out on a collecting trip in February 2026. Photo: Fredrick Larabee.
Larabee has been working with other students to digitize the entire collection at the museum, which has never been done in its history. And in the last few years, an increasing number of SJSU students have collected new specimens at local parks and reserves.
“Insects are everywhere,” says Larabee. “That’s one of the things we train budding entomologists on. Insects are pervasive parts of natural and modified environments. You can collect in all kinds of places.”
In the past, there were no restrictions to what or how one collected. Now there are regulatory hurdles. The City of San José has a permit process and gives permission on what can be collected from where. Once students have permission, they can load up their gear — forceps, aspirators and butterfly nets — and go out into the field to collect.
The live insects that are collected are immediately deposited in ethanol, or they’re brought back to the lab to freeze before being curated.
Students write in field notebooks about how, when and where the insects are collected. If an insect is eating a plant, the students will collect information on the plant they were eating.
“The specimen has all kinds of information associated with it that’s really valuable. And even more valuable is the additional info they’re collecting. Because it gives you a window into the ecology of that species,” says Larabee.
In 2024, Larabee received funding from the California Institute for Biodiversity for a ground beetle digitization project. When he asked his class if anyone would be available to work on the new project, Audrey Nguyen, ’26 Ecology and Evolution, jumped at the opportunity.
“The first thing that got me was the collection aspect. I love to collect natural history specimens. Something about my brain likes scanning and looking for details,” says Nguyen, who has worked on the ground beetle digitalization for the past couple of years. “Getting to know the subject, I really find insects beautiful from an artistic standpoint. They’re so different from humans and mammals.”
Fredrick Larabee and Audrey Nguyen at the J. Gordon Edwards Entomology Museum.
California Insect Barcoding Initiative
With its many deserts, forests and coasts, California is a global biodiversity hot spot, home to more species than any other in the United States. Across the state, there are over 6,500 native plants, a third of which cannot be found anywhere else in the world. And as far as insects go, California has an estimated 100,000 species.
“One specimen at a time, scientists at the Cal Academy are creating a reference database for the DNA barcodes of all California insects, which may number as many as 100,000 species when all is said and done,” says Brad Balukjian, who works as an entomologist for the California Academy of Sciences.
On the hunt for various specimens, the academy has traveled to various museums and research institutions across the state — including, of course, a stop at SJSU’s entomology museum.
“The technicians ended up taking about 600 specimens from our collection,” says Larabee.
Smaller collections, like the one at San José State, are useful because they represent local biodiversity.
“In terms of quantifying local biodiversity, the smaller collections are valuable for looking at temporal changes in insect communities,” says Larabee.
Daniel Gluesenkamp, the president and executive director of the California Institute for Biodiversity, hopes that the barcoding initiative will support scientists in discovering species of insects that haven’t yet been discovered.
“The intent of the barcoding initiative is to, in a nutshell, figure out what we have in California, use DNA sequencing to identify insects that would otherwise not be identified, and to also find thousands of new undiscovered species,” says Gluesenkamp. “We have no maps of insect biodiversity in California right now. They’re important to decide which areas to save and protect.”
Two of Larabee’s students, who have since graduated from SJSU, have worked on the barcoding initiative. Raymond Reyes, ’24 Biological Sciences, started out by working in Larabee’s lab, helping with museum curation, along with organizing, pinning and documenting specimens. He then interned for the barcoding initiative. After he graduated from SJSU, he was hired by the California Academy of Sciences to continue his work on the barcoding initiative as a museum technician.
“During my internship, I would go into the museum at San José State to look for specimens for the barcoding project. And then, when I started working at Cal Academy, I gained access to their collection. And so now I’m going through tons of insect specimens, looking at every label. It’s all very methodical work,” says Reyes. “Getting my start working at the lab at SJSU made me feel more confident in my abilities. It taught me so much. I’m very thankful for where I’m at right now.”
Urgency
Since little is known about insects, projects like the California Insect Barcoding Initiative and the digitization of ground beetles are deeply vital.
“Only a handful of studies have tried to understand how insects are doing ecologically. Unfortunately those few studies are painting dire pictures for insect populations,” says Larabee.
When it comes to insects, monarch butterflies are currently getting the most attention, as there is a concern that these iconic creatures will go extinct. But Larabee feels this concern shouldn’t be solely reserved for butterflies.
“When people have done more systematic broad studies and have looked at a lot of different species, they’re seeing the same patterns — their abundance, the total number of individuals in ecosystems, are crashing over the last few decades,” says Larabee. “That’s really alarming when you think of the importance of insects as the base of each ecosystem. So many things eat insects and so many of them are pollinators. Insects are responsible for most ecosystems chugging along and so it sort of adds additional urgency to biodiversity studies.”
Although scientists are still trying to determine exactly why insects are disappearing, they are currently pointing to land use changes, pesticides and climate change as a few of the biggest culprits.
Larabee is invested in demonstrating the value of small regional collections, like SJSU’s J. Gordon Edwards Museum.
Sophia Di Piazza holding up specimens at the J. Gordon Edwards Entomology Museum.
Jorge Torres studying specimens at the J. Gordon Edwards Entomology Museum.
Top photo (left to right): Kenny Rupert, Akira Nishikawa, '26 Environmental Studies; Sophia Di Piazza, '27 MS Ecology and Evolutionary Biology; Fredrick Larabee, Audrey Nguyen, ’26 Ecology and Evolution; Alynna Quezada and Jorge Torres.
“Any time we can get involved in a project that is much larger than the university, like the insect barcoding initiative, that’s a really important contribution we can make,” says Larabee. “This is why we should keep this museum around. So we can keep contributing.”
Larabee is dedicated to getting the word out to students, so they know that the museum is a resource available for them to use. And the uses don’t just extend to science majors. In the past, graphic design and animation students have visited the entomology museum to sketch specimens or even just find inspiration for something they’re creating.
The hope is that spreading the word will help to keep the momentum for the J. Gordon Edwards Museum alive, and that its existence will continue to make a valuable contribution toward understanding and preserving insect species across California.
“Planet Earth is rich with life, and as far as we know, it’s the only life in the universe. We're losing insects fast. Insects are disappearing really fast, so our complete lack of knowledge about them is a big impediment,” says Gluesenkamp. “This project is securing all the knowledge we need to do a better job of saving them and securing them, so that future generations can get access to insects.”
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