Bedbugs and skeeters
and bees ... oh my!

So passionate about bugs, Associate Professor of Biology Robert Hancock uses his own body to demonstrate how mosquitoes and bedbugs feed. Robert Hancock has an uncommon mission: “My goal is to get people more excited about bugs!”

And, the associate professor of biology admits that his methods of achieving that mission are equally uncommon. Take, for example, the fact that he keeps live bedbugs in his office and routinely feeds them…off of his own arm.




Or the fact that he recently wrote, produced, filmed and starred in the “Bedbugs of London,” which received an honorable mention for macro cinematography from the International Wildlife Film Festival. In the film, Hancock lies down in a bed that he knows is infested with bedbugs. Through a time-lapse sequence, viewers watch with horror as the bugs march across the pristine white sheets toward his arm and then latch on and become engorged.

“It’s all very sensational,” he admits. “But these are the things that grab people and then, suddenly, people are paying attention to bugs.”

He’s right. Just ask Amber Lynn Partridge, a junior biology major who is working on a Hancock-designed study of mosquito feeding habits.

“I was not even thinking about mosquitoes a year ago,” she says. “Bugs grossed me out. But you get in his classroom and you can’t help but get excited about this stuff.

“Now I know this is my path. This is what I want to do with my life.”

Hancock is like a cross between the Crocodile Hunter and a 7-year-old boy who thinks bugs are cool. “He’s just a little bit off, but in a really great way,” says his student Chad Haines. Let’s go on a bug hunt!

Hancock is a 5 feet, 6 inch cross between the Crocodile Hunter and a 7-year-old boy who thinks bugs are cool. In fact, he uses the phrase “very cool” quite often when discussing rather unsavory characters, such as bedbugs and lice.

Known simply as “Doc” or “Doctor H” to his students, Hancock joined the Metro State Biology Department last August. He is renewing the department’s entomology curriculum after a seven-year hiatus caused by the last entomologist’s retirement.

In addition to “Bedbugs of London,” Hancock wrote, filmed, starred in and produced a movie about mosquitoes titled, “Swamp Angels.” He is nationally known as “The Mosquito Man” because of this film and the many studies he’s done over the years.

He says that both movies are so fun to watch that they get even bug-o-phobes excited about the topic—and that’s exactly what he wants.

This spring, Hancock was walking across the Auraria Campus with two students in tow. They were headed down to the bridges that span the Platte River near Invesco Field at Mile High to look for swallow bugs.

(l to r) Patrick Casto, Amber Lynn Partridge, Chad Haines and Mindy Imsdahl get a closer look at a specimen Hancock caught. Suddenly, the inevitable happened.

“Dr. Hancock! Look!” yelled, Tiffany Beatty, a junior biology major.

Hancock, all sinew and adrenaline, stopped instantly, wheeled around and sprinted to Beatty’s side.

“What did you find?” he said, his energy and curiosity for her discovery akin to a father who is taking his daughter on her first backyard worm hunt.

There, on the ground, was a red spider. To the untrained eye, it was just your average creepy crawly bug. To Hancock and his students, it was a fascinating discovery.

“Tiffany, do you know what this is?” said Hancock. “This! This is a woodlouse hunter!”

At that, the other student sitting on the grass nearby jumped up and came over. Hancock was down in a squat trying to catch the spider but quickly realized the “little gal” did not want to be touched.

“Ohhhhh! Ho! Ho! Look at that!” said Hancock, his hand still closer to the spider than most would dare. “She’s an aggressive little gal! See how she gets right into position? Look at those mandibles. If she bit me, it wouldn’t feel very good.”

The trio discussed the spider’s qualities and then shepherded it to the grass on the other side of the walk like three mother hens with a chick. They then proceeded to the river to conduct their official bug hunt, still surveying the ground along the way. Under the concrete bridges above the Platte, they discovered thriving swallow nests tucked with military precision. The challenge, though, was reaching the nests to count swallow bugs, pesky “little guys” that damage, even cause the death of swallows.

Upon leaving, the students had a task: figure out a way to view the nests and count the bugs. Beatty, who walks around with a behemoth of a backpack and always carries binoculars, was already spinning off ideas.

Research for undergraduates

The swallow bug study is just one of several research projects Hancock has launched, offering experiences to undergraduate students that they never imagined they would get. For example, he is leading a study of mosquitoes along the Front Range, a project that came to fruition when he discovered that one of his students, Matthew Hendrix, a junior biology major, works for Colorado Mosquito Control. After one brief meeting, Hancock and Hendrix were able to get their hands on 1,500 mosquitoes captured last summer.

Now Hendrix and Partridge are working side-by-side in a lab sorting the female mosquitoes into eight different species and “yanking out” their ovaries. They are also grinding up the mosquito carcasses and testing for fructose levels, which will tell them what and when the bugs had last eaten.

Amber Lynn Partridge, shown here with Hancock in his lab, says, “Bugs grossed me out.” Now she plans to earn a master’s degree in vector entomology and study malaria in Africa. Simultaneously, Hancock is launching a bee study with up to 10 students conducting the research. The team recently gathered in a biology lab to map out the study, which will include the field work of capturing urban and rural bees and then lab work—“popping off their heads, removing their tracheal tubes to look for mites, and removing their pollen baskets.”

Characteristically, Hancock began the first “bee team” meeting by asking the students what they wanted to learn. This is a study that he is launching purely to satisfy student interest and to provide them with what he considers necessary skills and experiences.

“Part of a complete biology education is not just the nuts and bolts that you get from textbooks, but it’s the process of learning to think,” he notes from his Metro State office, which is littered with Ziploc bug-baggies that people bring him from their homes, their yards and their walks. A bowl of dried-up worms sits on a side table and a case of six jars of live bedbugs sits on the floor.

Some of the students involved in the bee study say that they aren’t necessarily excited about bees, but they are very excited to see how the research process works.

“This is the first research I’ve ever done,” says Chad Haines, a junior biology major. “I plan to go to graduate school and study toxicology. Working on this study means I won’t show up to grad school clueless about how to conduct research.”

Mindy Imsdahl, a senior biology major, says that she hopes to publish and present a poster at an upcoming parasitological conference, something relatively uncommon for undergraduates. She is also working on a bedbug study with Hancock.

“I now understand how I work, my critical-thinking process,” she says. “Nothing that I’m doing right now would have been possible a year ago.”

Patrick Casto, a sophomore biology major, agrees. He has loved bugs since childhood but when he asked his Metro State advisor about entomology classes in 2007, he was told he’d have to drive to Boulder for a class at the University of Colorado.

“Then, about a year later, the same advisor told me, ‘We’re bringing in an entomologist,’” says Casto, who admits he immediately started jockeying for a seat in Hancock’s first class.

Gimmicks that work

Hancock came to Metro State from University of the Cumberlands in Kentucky where he taught for 15 years. He says he is excited to be in Denver and at Metro State where the students bring such diverse backgrounds to the classroom.

“My first semester here, I taught a Saturday class,” he recalls. “I had everything in there: Mothers with large families who were chiseling away on a degree, people changing their path in life and a lot of people who never went to college before and have circles under their eyes because they work all day.”

Coming from a more traditional undergraduate college with students averaging 18 to 21 years old, Hancock says this has been an inspiring change.

“Metro students are cool as can be and they know how to think because they’ve got a lot of life behind them.”

The appreciation is mutual.

“He’s just a little bit ‘off,’” says Haines. “But in a really great way. He truly loves what he’s doing.”

Hendrix adds, “I don’t think I’ve ever had a teacher who has as much fun as he has.”

Hancock admits he’s an “enthusiastic performance” junkie. He loves communicating about what excites him, whether it’s in a classroom, on a bug hunt or on camera.

Bill Baxendale, professor of biology, says he enjoys the energy and synergy Hancock brings to the department.

“Plants and bugs go hand-in-hand,” says Baxendale, whose specialty is botany. “For example, my students who are interested in pollen can help Hancock with the bee study. Our students will be very well-rounded.”

The bug hunt at Crown Hill Lake continues into the twilight. Coming to Metro State has been an inspiring change for Hancock, who says, “Metro students are as cool as can be.” The future looks buggy

True to form, Hancock has several irons in the fire beyond the research projects. Long-term, he hopes to produce another bug movie, tentatively titled, “The Lice Who Loved Me.” It will involve student research and travel to Russia where lice, he says, contributed to Napoleon’s defeat by spreading typhus.

For that study, he says he will also “host” lice on his body in a screened container under his sock.

Short-term, Hancock hopes to involve students in a movie about Colorado streams, focusing on the ecosystems that support trout. Namely, of course, bugs.

The future also looks buggy for Hancock’s current students, who have their eyes set on goals that had never crossed their minds a year ago. From publishing to careers, they say they have “a new fire” lit inside them.

Partridge now plans to earn a master’s degree in vector entomology and then will travel to Africa to study malaria, a direct result of her new passion for mosquitoes.

“Metro is an amazing school and there are a lot of amazing professors here,” she says, “but I have never before had a professor who was so focused on my goals and helping me get there.”