Bug of the Year campaign gets buzzing

Will prayer help the praying mantis? Are bees buzzy drumming up enough support? Huhu do these beetles think they'll beat? Or have sandflies bitten off more than they can chew?

The Bug of the Year campaign has begun with 24 contenders vying for the title - and it coincides with a pollination workshop at Tūhura Otago Museum. 

Workshop co-coordinator Dr Jenny hoped the interactive day would improve understanding about bugs and give people added insect-ive to vote.

She also sits on the Bug of the Year organising committee.

"All of the little critters that are creeping, crawling around your garden, they're doing something. They're not there to scare you, they're there to live their best life too, and to aerate the soil or decompose the chicken poop or to eat up the leaves that fell to the ground."

She is eager to encourage more people to get bug-eyed about insects at the pollinator workshop on Saturday.

The day will include building wildflower seed bombs, learning how to build a bug motel, starting a herb garden, and getting up close and personal with a variety of insects.

Science educator Samuel Purdie is hoping to bring along a black tunnel web spider, prickly stick insects and a few other critters for show and tell - but it will depend on what he can find.

"What I often like to do is I try and find the biggest, scariest, beefiest spider I can find, and I'll get people to hold it or at least look at it up close and that often helps people that are quite scared, because people fear what they don't understand."

Purdie found a few stick insects and a sheetweb spider while out looking on Wednesday night.

The male spiders often have weapons they use to fight each other.

"The males often have greatly exaggerated chelicerae - or fangs - to the point that when the spider's crawling on me, it will be bumping its fangs on my skin. It won't hurt me, but it's just bumping them because they're so massive," Purdie said.

It helped to persevere - and have a bit of luck on your side - when searching for bugs, he said.

"Often times when it comes to certain species, like some stick insects, it's actually best to look at night time and go with a spotlight and search for them on trees.

"But sometimes, you can find lots of cool critters just by carefully flipping logs and stones and seeing what's underneath and then carefully rolling those back."

One of his top contenders is the antlion lacewing - the adults look like a dragonfly with club-like antennae while the larvae look plump, oval and dirt-coloured with large pincers, and often have bristles.

The larvae are crafty predators that create a pit or vortex of sand for their prey.

"They sit at the bottom with their jaws wide-open, waiting for little insects to fall down and just like a sandworm from the movie and book Dune, it will just jump through and pull these critters into the ground," Purdie said.

"I've pictures of little bees in the bottom of these pits, and then the [antlion] will move the sand and this bee will just disappear below the surface."

Pollinator workshop co-coordinator Connal McLean said insects' creepy - even weevil - reputation was somewhat deserved.

"They've got six legs, they've got lots of eyes and wings. There's just a lot going on that isn't very human so I think a lot of people, once they get over that initial 'what is this creature?', they can really start to appreciate how cool they are."

He will have a few bumble bees that people can feed sugar water using toothpicks, and was catching and releasing them at a public garden this week.

The museum's Natural Science collection manager, On Lee Lau, was bugged by insects when she was a kid.

Now she hoped to share that appreciation.

"One of the things we want to encourage is people going in to the gardens and seeing what they have, actually looking at their faces which can be quite cute."

But she recognised it could be an uphill battle for some.

"If you don't actually enjoy bugs, you can do a hate vote and so you can hate vote for the sandfly, and it's just all in good fun. It's all a part of increasing awareness in general. 

"Bugs can be very polarising. You love them or you hate them and so this is a good way to capture that hate vote."

Dr Jenny Jandt has a tip for those keen to protect pollinators.

"One of the best and easiest things you can do - leave those little dandelions and those little flowering flowers that are popping up through your lawn, leave them be. That's one of the best food sources for pollinators, especially at this time of the year when you're waiting for things to bloom."

The free Pollinator Workshop is open to all at the Tūhura Otago Museum between 10am and 3pm on Saturday.

Voting for the Bug of the Year closes in February and the country's favourite creepy crawly will be crowned on Valentine's Day 2023.

Organisers hope the 23 unlucky contenders won't be too waspish in defeat.