STATE COLLEGE, Pa. — Michael Skvarla is an assistant research professor who operates the Insect Identification Laboratory at Penn State University.
Skvarla recently made national news for his discovery of a bug that hasn't been seen in Eastern North America for more than 50 years. He discovered a Giant Lacewing outside a Walmart in Arkansas in 2012.
"Picked it up with my hands and walked through Walmart and picked up a few groceries with it in my hand," said Skvarla. "Then I killed it when I got home, spread the wings out to make it look nice, and then mounted it in my collection and forgot about it for about 10 years,"
At the time, Skvarla thought the bug was an Antlion, a very common group of insects associated with more than 2,000 species. He finally realized it was a Giant Lacewing while teaching a class at Penn State.
"Told my students that we are going to work through this, and we are going to figure out what this is together," he said. "Within a minute or two, we had figured out that it was a Giant Lacewing."
The Giant Lacewing has ties that predate dinosaurs.
"The family affinity, the Giant Lacewing's, which includes many species around the world, originated in the Jurassic era. That family has since gone on to spread around the world," he added.
Now, researchers are working to find out how the bug got to Arkansas or if the species still exists east of the Rocky Mountains.
"The most likely probability is that there is a population there that has been breeding and reproducing for the last 50 years undetected... another possibility is that it was blown in from the West maybe by a storm or brought in via freight on a truck," Skvarla said.
The bug is currently housed at the Frost Entomological Museum on campus. Skvarla says it may soon be put on display for people to view.
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