Nikolai K. Artley

Hello! I'm Niko. Currently I am an undergraduate student at Clemson University in South Carolina, USA; my graduation date is May 2025, and I'm getting my degree in conservation biology and entomology.

I stumbled into entomology entirely on accident -- I grew up in a sterile suburb of Milwaukee, WI, USA and, while I loved being outside, I never really immersed myself in it. When I arrived at Clemson, I found the Clemson University Arthropod Collection (CUAC) by a stroke of luck, and I was awestruck. It was an entirely new world. It was the coolest thing I'd ever seen.

Fortunately for me, the curator Mike Ferro was willing to give a newly arrived undergrad a chance, and I started my first fall semester by checking all 1200+ drawers in the collection for signs of pest damage. Come registration time, Mike said to me "hey, John Morse is teaching his aquatic insects class this spring. You should take it."

"Mike," I said, "I've never taken any entomology!"

"That's OK. John'll get you there."

So I registered for ENT 4980, Biomonitoring with Aquatic Insects, in Spring 2022. For our first lab meeting, we went out to a nearby creek to sample. We brought our bugs back to Clemson to ID, and I raised my hand and asked "Dr. Morse... what's the metathorax?"

He looked at me in a kind of disbelief and said "well... you've taken 3010 [the intro entomology course], haven't you?"

"No........." I said, rather sheepishly. "Mike said I should go ahead and take this before 3010 since it isn't offered every year."

Somewhat of a rocky start. But, at the end of that semester, I would have been able to take and pass the SFS eastern EPT certification test -- I know this because I helped Dr. Morse teach his summer course at Highlands Biological Station (North Carolina, USA) and passed the test then. That semester was my introduction to entomology, and since then I've been hooked.