Ishaan Joseph, a South Pasadena High student with a lifelong love for bugs, is spending his senior year on a project few kids his age would try to attempt.
He is tracking how insect life is coming back in two of the neighborhoods hit hardest with wildfires here: Altadena and Pacific Palisades.
That question of recovery became the seed of an independent research project now tracking insect populations across both burn areas, and it is just one piece of a much bigger picture. This South Pasadena senior is also the founder of South Pasadena High’s Bug Club, a contributor to a Harvard/UT Austin-led study on insects and artificial light, and, at just 17, a presenter at the Lepidopterists’ Society’s annual conference at Carnegie Hall.
“I chose Altadena and Pacific Palisades specifically, as they were fire affected areas that I had many fond memories of,” he said. “Both locations were beloved by me, and I made many wonderful memories there.”
Picking the exact sampling sites, however, came down to hard science.
“I searched for areas where the majority of land was burned within at least a 2,000-meter radius to minimize/eliminate the possibility of insects coming in from unburned areas,” a design choice meant to keep the data honest, isolating true post-fire recolonization from insects simply wandering in from nearby untouched habitat, close to home turf for a South Pasadena kid who knows the foothills well.
Inside the methodology
Most of the fieldwork happens in spring, “the peak insect season in California,” with follow-up data and sampling continuing into summer. The insects themselves are never harmed. Instead, a specialized UV light draws them in for observation, after which he records their numbers and species.
“There are many factors (especially with insects) that can positively or negatively influence the reliability and applicability of your data, so how the experiment is carried out is very important,” he noted.
Establishing a true “before” picture was trickier than it might sound. Citizen science records, like insect sightings Angelenos have logged on iNaturalist, offer some sense of what lived in these areas pre fire, but “it is not as precise as what is needed for the study.”
His workaround was running the same survey methods at additional, unburned sites around Los Angeles, creating a live comparison between recovering populations and relatively healthy ones.
Early findings
It’s still early days for firm conclusions, but the project has already turned up “a variety of different insects, and quite a few surprises.”
The biggest one came this summer, during a set of community events he organized through Bug Club for National Moth Week, tied directly to the fire recovery project. Across four events, around 30 students, hobbyists, and researchers turned out, many of them familiar faces from South Pasadena and the wider San Gabriel Valley bug-watching scene.
During one of those nights, the group stumbled on something remarkable: a potential first record of the Sooty Lappet Moth (Gloveria gargamelle) in the San Gabriel Valley.
“Everyone at the site was equally surprised as excited to find the moth, especially as the ecosystem was still recovering from the fires,” he said.
Altadena vs. Palisades
While it’s too soon to compare which species are bouncing back fastest, a pattern between the two sites has already emerged. Altadena, just a short drive north of South Pasadena, is “recovering faster and better than the site in the Palisades,” both in insect density and in the presence of native plant species.
The Palisades tell a more concerning story. On his first post fire visit, he found the site overrun by fast-spreading invasive plants, most notably castor bean (Ricinus communis) and various invasive grasses. “[They] displace many of our beloved California plants and animals,” he said.
What Bugs Tell Us About the Bigger Picture
For him, insect recovery is the real trendsetter for the health of the entire ecosystem.
“An abundance of insects reflects a healthy ecosystem, and a lack of insects means an ecosystem is declining or recovering poorly,” he explained. Insects pollinate flowers, break down dead matter to recycle nutrients, and form the base of the food web that birds and other wildlife depend on. “If we take away insect populations around the world, we take away the animals and plant life that rely on them.” In that light, watching insects return to Altadena and the Palisades is really a way of watching the land itself heal, foothills and coastline alike.
Where the obsession began
Joseph’s fascination with insects goes back to early childhood, around age three or four, growing up in Colorado.
“I would beg my parents to take me to the local butterfly exhibit at the natural history museum,” he recalled. “The array of colors, shapes, and patterns on the butterflies enticed me and I wanted to know more.”
That early curiosity eventually followed him to Southern California and led him to the Lepidopterists’ Society’s annual conference, where he presented at just 17.
“It was definitely scary at first,” he admitted. “When I sat down in the Carnegie Lecture Hall and looked around, I was the only teenager in the room.”
He calmed his nerves by remembering that “we were all here for the same reason: our passion for protecting and studying butterflies and moths!” Being one of the youngest people in a specialized field like Lepidopterology, he added, has its own reward, meeting people of all ages, countries, and backgrounds who can “gush about a certain type of bug for hours and hours.”
Building the Bug Club
Back at South Pasadena High, that same passion led him to found the Bug Club with a handful of close friends, after noticing “a small but passionate group of students who were interested in the field of Entomology.”
His vision for the club goes beyond insects alone. He wants it to be “a space for not just insect lovers, but nature lovers in general,” a home base for the kind of kid who grew up flipping over rocks in their South Pasadena backyard. This year, the club is planning insect-related mini-projects, lessons, and guest researcher visits. With more high schoolers gravitating toward research labs and independent projects, he hopes to use his own experience to introduce members to real research tools and methods, with GIS, citizen science, and field surveys among them.
Other projects in the field
Joseph’s research portfolio extends well beyond the fire recovery study.
He’s part of a project studying Carposina, a genus of moths, led by Camiel Doorenweerd of the Dan Rubinoff Lab at the University of Hawaiʻi Mānoa, working alongside Matthew J. Medeiros, an associate researcher also at UH Mānoa.
His role on the project is helping match photos of unidentified moths to known species, or flagging specimens as likely new species, using photos of wing patterns and, where needed, finer anatomical features for identification.
Carposina moths turn up worldwide but are concentrated in the Austral-Asian region, and a large share of the known species exist nowhere else on Earth but Hawaiʻi.
He’s also contributing to a study led by a Harvard fellow and assistant professor at the University of Texas at Austin, examining how latitude and temperature affect how quickly flying insects approach artificial light after sunset.
“If we have a better understanding of when and how rapidly insects can be found at a given location in the world, we can study insects more precisely, and gather more information about endangered species that need further protection from human activity,” Joseph said.
He landed a spot on the project through a professor he met at UCLA, not too far from home.
He’s also a South Pasadena High senior applying to college.
“To be honest, it’s hard to balance my projects with the demands of senior year,” he said candidly, describing days spent out surveying insects followed by two or three tests the next morning. He credits time management, work ethic, and knowing when to rest, along with steady support from his parents.
“My parents’ dedication and encouragement to my interests means so much to me, and help in many different ways,” he said.
Looking ahead
As for what comes next academically, he describes himself as an interdisciplinary student with interests spanning entomology, microbiology, computational biology, plant biology, mathematics, fine art, and computer science, leaving the door open to several possible paths within biology and ecology.
As many students consider their future careers amid the emergence of of artificial intelligence, Ishaan isn’t concerned at all.
The fire recovery project itself isn’t going anywhere. Next season, he plans to gather even more data from both sites, building toward a clearer scientific picture of how Altadena and the Palisades are healing.
He hopes to continue tracking the populations for years to come, even after he heads off to college.
“I hope the results of the study inform and inspire future efforts to conserve and protect the wildlife of Los Angeles,” he said.