Ent-o-Lantern 2009

2009 saw a larger crowd in our lab than previous years, so we ramped up our pumpkin to allow everyone to participate. Before we get to it though, here are a few of the side projects people made with extraneous vegetables:

Now for the pièce de résistance!

We chose a Eurytoma wasp (Eurytomidae) attacking a goldenrod gall for this year’s theme, and incorporated practically the entire produce department into it. But wait, there’s more!

Now with more maggots! Our wasp is composed of sculptured pumpkin chunks dyed green with food colouring (which worked remarkably well), string bean legs and antennae, candy berries for eyes, pop bottle wings, gourd abdomen, okra ovipositor and an onion maggot resting on a bed of pumpkin-gut frass. Hollowing out 4 onions and joining them together proved to be one of the more difficult challenges, while we learned that insect pins are also effective for holding vegetative sculptures together. We had about 11 people helping out this year; carving commenced at 5pm, and I took these photos around 1am, giving us 88 entomologist hours of work!

After posting the pictures on Facebook last year, we went viral in the Canadian entomological community, with the photos ultimately being featured in the Bulletin of the Entomological Society of Canada (pg 61). Who would have guessed that my first published photos would be of a pumpkin? I couldn’t be prouder though of how this turned out!