From student fieldwork to a public museum: The FAC Entomology Project

In a quiet corner of the campus of Fazl Ali College, Mokokchung, thousands of preserved wings shimmer under glass. Inside one of the college buildings, a locally crafted display structure, unassuming in appearance, holds rows of glass cabinets in which pinned insects, beetles and moths, delicate wings and armored carapaces, sit like a library of small lives. Student-made dioramas and hand-drawn labels stand beside specimens prepared in the college lab. Sparse in resources yet rich in curiosity, the exhibit forms the heart of a bold experiment: the Museum of Entomology (MUSE), an initiative that has turned classroom collecting into a nascent biodiversity hub.

“The idea was there for a long time,” says Imlinungla, Associate Professor and Head of the Department of Zoology at FAC. For years,