D3170: Ask an entomologist: Got questions about bugs? We have the answers!

Ask an Entomologist (AaE) is a user-guided insect outreach service. Based on emails and an online blog, users are free to submit questions about insects via email. The team of entomologists (Joe Ballenger, Joanie King, Jamie Kopco, and Nancy Miorelli) running the service work together to answer the questions by responding to the emails. When questions are repeated by a large number of submissions, exciting to the answerers, or pertinent to recent developments in the field of entomology, the question and answer are written up as blog posts (https://askentomologists.com), generally with a combination of text, references to scientific papers, and one or more graphics or videos. Since its inception, AaE has answered thousands of entomological questions and posted dozens of blog posts, all on volunteered time from its contributors. In many answers and blog posts, the authors reinforce general STEM concepts that extend beyond entomology and help connect non-scientists to scientific literature. AaE is also a unique outreach service because it is broadly available to anyone with internet access, giving it international reach and broad diversity of audiences and questions. It also reverses a typical outreach model by passively inviting audiences to approach rather than actively seeking audiences. Despite its informal and entirely electronic nature, AaE has proven to be an impactful and engaging approach to entomology outreach and education