The Florida Psocids vs. the Minnesota Bruins at Bozeman
 
 By Carol Flaherty
 MSU News Service

4/30l97 Contact: Will Lanier (406) 994-5690, Connie Estep (406) 994-5285
 
BOZEMAN -- The exhibition match of the Florida Psocids against the Minnesota Bruins in Bozeman in 1995 is still making news.
The Psocids, known to play best on a wet field, started by eating through the Bruin defenses. But the hulking Bruins held the small Psocid team to minor gains in the second half as the field dried out. Visibility was limited for the audience, because the contest took place on the tiny scale of insects.
Psocids (pronounced "so-cids") are minute pale insects that can infest organic material when there is mold present for them to eat. They attacked the mounted bears in a traveling exhibit developed by the Science Museum of Minnesota. The exhibit had just been in Florida, where humidity contributed to mold in the bear fur and therefore to the psocid infestation. The exhibit was in Montana State University's Museum of the Rockies during the summer of 1995.
         What's still making news is the teaming of MSU's Museum of the Rockies registrar and the MSU Extension Service's Integrated Pest Management Project's diagnostician. As registrar, Connie Estep is charged with both tracking and protecting artifacts. As diagnostician, Will Lanier helps design IPM programs and identify insects.
         The two have talked to museum staff around the region about their experiences running an IPM program at Museum of the Rockies. They also are scheduled to speak to members of the Mountain-Plains Museurn Association in Missoula Oct. 1-4.
Integrated Pest Management or "IPM" is a term most often associated with agriculture, and, indeed, agriculture-related IPM still dominates Lanier s work.
         "It was interesting to watch the wheels turn as Will made the jump from ag to artifacts," says Estep. One of Lanier's calls to Estep as they worked on a presentation to museum staffwas to ask how long the artifacts would have to be kept insect-pest free.
         "How does perpetuity sound?" Estep remembers as her answer.
         To develop an IPM program that will protect Museum of the Rockies exhibits in perpetuity takes both monitoring conditions and thinking ahead.
         To monitor insects, Lanier set up a sampling program using insect traps in every room in the museum. Estep checks the traps every three weeks and Just before and after a new exhibit is displayed.
         After the bear exhibit left, Estep found psocids in the traps.
         "We had the insect identified and alerted the next museum the bear exhibit went to," says Lanier. "Sure enough, they found the mold and psocids."
         Thinking ahead about potential problems can be a real challenge. A moth trap at the musum needed animal hair as a bait, but would the hair bring in insects of its own? Similarly, an exhibit needed to use bales of hay, but Estep needed to do something about the insects that, inevitably, would be in the hay.
         So, among other things in the last few years, Estep hauled bales of hay and tufts of dog hair to a commercial deep-freeze. She put them through rapid deep freeze and thaw cycles to kill any insects.
         "You're always going to have insects," says Estep. "The Dermestid family of beetle is the most worrisome for us. It's also called a hide beetle, because it feeds on the hides that are so much a part of any Western exhibit: beaver skins, Native American clothing, almost anything organic."
         Estep regularly finds the Dermestid beetle in the museum's IPM traps, especially around the museum's entrances, exits and anywhere there is food.
         "That's why we have no food and drink areas where there are exhibit spaces," she adds.
         So far, Estep says she hasn't had to use pesticides inside the museum.
         "Since we know where the problem areas are, we work with the custodians and have those areas on more frequent cleanings, which include using the crevice tool where the carpet meets the wall."
         If Connie Estep might be called the "score keeper for the match between humans and insects, Lanier is the umpire, identifying which players run afoul of the museum's goals. The humans have science and technology on their side, but the insects have numbers. Millions and millions of insects are just waiting to blow in on a breeze, crawl over the threshold, or ride in on a wool coat or a bear hide.