Bethany Deffenbaugh

Undergraduate Fellow, Pawpaw Patrol

“I want to evangelize for bugs.”

Our world is incontestably human-centric. Bethany Deffenbaugh is out to protect the little guys.

Under the mentorship of Chloe Gahret and Anna Wassel, Bethany spends her days analyzing the biodiversity of pawpaw*-containing (*Missouri native small understory tree) vs. non-pawpaw-containing forest plots. But her favorite part of the job is looking at the insects beneath the brush.

Why do you have this love of the minutia?

“I am hyper-obsessed with the small world that everybody else intentionally does not look at. Everybody was scared and grossed out by bugs and dirt and mud and outdoors. So as a kid, I leaned into that! I like little things, so there is lots of stuff along the way that makes me like bugs. I feel at peace in nature.”

Does that worldview rub off on those around you?

“Definitely. When I met my husband, he hated mosquitoes so badly that he was ordering agricultural-grade pesticides to spray in his yard. The first time I heard that, I cried. My stepson used to kill bugs all the time. My son used to be afraid of animals and insects in nature. And several years later, I feel like they all love insects.”

“We were recently at Grant's Farm. There were cicadas everywhere and everyone was freaking out because they were just landing on people. And each one of us in our family had several cicadas each, just looking at them. People around us were commenting on how gross it was that we were holding them – so many mixed responses. My husband told me, ‘You are showing them that there's nothing to be afraid of.’ They are going to take away that experience even if they didn't handle it well.”