LAWRENCE — A Kansas University entomologist wants to bug you. KU Biodiversity Institute curator Caroline Chaboo has received a federal grant to computerize photos, information and maps relating to thousands of insects. Chaboo said she regularly gets phone calls and e-mails from homeowners, gardeners and even U.S. Customs officials who ask her to help identify bugs. She said she intends to digitize those and other photos and information so anyone with a computer and Internet can learn about most bugs. Sometimes even she’s stumped and later finds out there was information or photos of the bug somewhere else. Generations of bug scientists have collected samples and date about 4 million bugs and then filed it in boxes or libraries and few people know about them, she said. She calls it “dark data,” and she wants to make it accessible to experts and even the public. Specialists and student will go through KU’s insect collection and convert put it on-line in an easy-to-use format, she said.
Tuesday, Aug. 2, 6:30 a.m.
