Big changes are afoot at the Frost Entomological Museum here at Penn State, and it’s time to start spreading the news to our stakeholders: insect taxonomists, amateur insect enthusiasts, potential entomology students, the Friends of the Frost, Odonata enthusiasts, casual and regular visitors to the museum, alumni, and just about everyone else. There is so much news, in fact, that it’s a challenge to figure out where to even begin!

Let’s start with personnel changes. The Frost has a brand new (and growing!) community of researchers and affiliated labs:

• Andy Deans (me) – I’m the new director of the Frost. My lab group’s research focuses primarily on the systematics and comparative morphology of parasitic Hymenoptera and on developing tools that facilitate the broad sharing of data derived from descriptive research, like taxonomic revisions. I came to the Frost from North Carolina State University, where I was the director of the NCSU Insect Museum for five years.
• István Mikó – Dr. Mikó is a world class insect comparative morphologist, Hymenoptera systematist, and biodiversity informatician (ontologist, in this case).
• Heather Hines – Dr. Hines is an assistant professor of Biology and Entomology, and her research focuses on the genetics of mimetic radiations and the systematics of bumble bees (Hymenoptera: Apidae) and Heliconius butterflies (Lepidoptera: Nymphalidae).

We all started at the Frost last summer (July 2012). So, what does this mean for activities at the Frost? Expect a surge in research activity, especially involving curation of Hymenoptera. Much, much more on this in later posts here. Expect also to see massive changes to the public face of the Frost and to see much more frequent communication about what’s happening here and in the world of insects.

The other news, besides the “acquisition” of new research affiliates, is that we have this new website(!) and a small set of other outlets through which we expect to communicate significant news:

• We have a Frost Museum twitter account
• And a Frost Museum Facebook group page
• Plus this new Frost Museum blog!

We’re just now coming online at all these sites, so it might be a couple weeks for us to get in the rhythm. Expect great things, though. More soon!