A Night at the Museum with Moths: An Entomological Collaboration for the Public

Across the globe, people are captivated by insects. In cities, the insects most often commonly recognized are either pests—the sight of which can be so terrible that some people just cannot look away—or key beneficial insects that are beloved by the public in urban settings (Polák et al. 2020, Fukano and Soga 2021). Regardless of the reason for the fascination, insects get people’s attention. When people are fascinated by insects, this makes for an excellent outreach scenario in which entomologists can teach the public about entomology, which reinforces the mutual trust that communities have in science and which may lead to an eventual change in cultural attitudes and policy decisions (Ben-Zvi 2024). The year 2025 marked the beginning of a collaboration between the American Museum of Natural History and National Moth Week. By walking on the streets of New York and showing off moth display cases and blacklight traps, we definitely piqued the curiosity of several onlookers and taught them some new entomology facts.