Dragonflies and Damselflies of Ohio


Dragonfly at Magee Marsh Wildlife Area.

Dragonfly at Magee Marsh Wildlife Area.

The Triplehorn Insect Collection is beginning a collaborative project to survey the dragonflies and damselflies of Ohio.

These spectacular aerial predators are surprisingly diverse: currently 164 species have been recorded in the state. Brilliant colors and striking markings make them the songbirds of the insect world. The immature stages of all species are aquatic, and these animals are found in lakes, rivers, ponds, and streams from Lake Erie to the Ohio River.  Although many dragonflies and damselflies are common, a number are listed as threatened or endangered.

This new Ohio Odonata Survey is scheduled to last 3 years. The work will be done together with the ODNR Division of Wildlife, the Ohio Odonata Society, and a network of avid volunteers and citizen scientists across the state.

MaLisa Spring, an Entomologist and recent OSU graduate, just joined us as coordinator for all of these efforts.  She will be working out of the Triplehorn Insect Collection in Columbus, and will be actively interacting with participants around the state.

Information on the project can be found in the newly created Ohio Odonata Survey website.  Project activities will also be widely advertised on social media.

Ohio naturalists are invited to contribute to the project. If you have images that can help document the distribution and seasonality of the various species of dragonflies and damselflies in our state, please check out the guidelines.

Finally, the Ohio Odonata Society will be holding its 2017 annual meeting, ODO-CON-17 on 23-25 June at the Grand River Conservation Campus in Rock Creek, OH.

Resources:

Photos by L. Musetti (dragonflies) & Huayan Chen (damselfly).

About the Author: Dr. Norman F. Johnson is an Entomologist, Professor at Ohio State University, and Director of the Triplehorn Insect Collection.

Backyard Bug Explorer


Visitors touring the Triplehorn Insect Collection are invariably drawn to the biggest, longest, most colorful creatures that we have among our four million specimens. Giant walking sticks, Goliath beetles, white witch moths, and birdwing butterflies are a sure hit with visitors of all ages.  One question that usually follows that exhilarating experience is … “Are these from Ohio?” And, unfortunately, we have to say that no, those enormous and colorful insects come from tropical forests in Africa or South America or elsewhere.

That is not to say, though, that there aren’t plenty of interesting and very striking insects in Ohio. In fact, there are plenty of cool insects right in our own backyards, many of them still poorly known or even completely unknown to science.

Here are just a few examples of the insect fauna that I found in my urban backyard in the past few weeks.


Bees & bee nests

During Spring, carpenter bees and bumble bees are very busy building their nests and collecting pollen. Well, that’s true of the female bees, anyway. The male carpenter bees are far too worried about patrolling their territory and checking out everything that comes along, all in the hope of finding a female that might be susceptible to their charms. Not to worry: the males are harmless, and you’d practically have to grab hold of a female before she would think of stinging.

 

◊  ◊  ◊  ◊

Under a clay pot that was left leaning against a wall, a queen bumble bee has dug a hole into the soil where she’s starting her own colony. The same sort of gardening accessories are also great places for spiders to build their webs and for insects to hide away their eggs from predators.


Wasp nests

A mud-nesting solitary wasp found the perfect place to build her nest among the wrinkles of a deteriorating plastic cover on an old outdoor fireplace in our yard.  This might be a mud dauber or perhaps a potter wasp nest. Either way, the mother wasp builds the nest using soft mud, then goes hunting for caterpillars or other insects.  The prey – stung into a state of suspended animation – is stuffed into the nest accompanied by a single wasp egg.  The larva that later hatches will feed on the living prey and develop into a new flying adult wasp.


Insect eggs (my all time favorite)

The most exciting finds for me are insect eggs. Sometimes the eggs are parasitized and produce the little wasps that are my object of study. Here on our screen door I found the eggs of an assassin bug. Each egg is like a small piece of art in itself each with a beautiful ornate crown. I’ve been watching carefully to see if assassin bug nymphs will emerge or if the eggs will produce any of my parasitic wasps.

This slideshow requires JavaScript.


Ants

When I rolled over a log, I found a number of Lasius interjectus.  These bright yellow ants are commonly called “citronella ants.” If you disturb them, they respond by releasing a bouquet of repellent chemicals that smell like lemon or the citronella candles used to repel mosquitoes. These ants are farmers: they maintain underground “herds” of aphids or mealybugs. These “cows” feed on the fluids in plant roots and excrete a sweet honeydew that the ants love.

◊  ◊  ◊  ◊

Here’s a quick video of the citronella ants. They are very cute!


Beetle larvae

I love looking for insects on, in, and under dead trees. Recently I found quite a number of very slick and shiny beetle larvae beneath the bark of a large dead tree near our house. I actually don’t know what kind of beetles they are, but I am hoping my buddies who study beetles will be able to identify them. And who knows, maybe I found something entirely new?!

◊  ◊  ◊  ◊

When disturbed the larvae move deeper into the soft wood.


I have more photos and videos of local insects, but I’ll stop here for now.  Yes, I know, the local bugs are not massive and showy like the amazing things that come from tropical rain forests, but pay close attention and you will find that they are just as fascinating. And best of all, they are right here in our backyard!

 Insects are everywhere. The more we learn about them the more we see how absolutely fascinating, beautiful, and important they are.

 

So take your family outside the house and go explore. Look around your backyard, watch for signs of insects, check out the flowers, the underside of tree leaves, listen to the buzz of the bees and see what they are doing.  Notice the differences between a bumble bee and a carpenter bee and other bees (get more info here.)



A final note: Monday, May 22, is the International Day for Biological Diversity. People all over the world and here in Ohio will be celebrating the day with the goal of increasing understanding and awareness about biodiversity, and to have a good time observing nature.

What a great opportunity to connect with fellow bug explorers and to promote the insect biodiversity that is right around us! Post your discoveries, photos, and musings about Ohio insects on social media. Use the hash tag #OhioBugs so we can keep in touch.

Hope to see you out there!


About the Author: Dr. Luciana Musetti is an Entomologist and the current Curator of the Triplehorn Insect Collection at The Ohio State University.

facebook.com/TriplehornInsectCollection

Follow on Tweeter or Instagram: @osuc_curator

Knull, the artist


As we discussed in our previous post, Josef Knull was well-recognized as a curator, a collector, and as an expert in wood-boring beetles. As a taxonomist he studied and described new genera and many new species of beetles in various families.

However, there’s another side of Joe Knull that hasn’t gotten the same attention: his talent as an artist. While moving some old books around the other day, we found a few pieces of what looks like a poster presentation by Joe Knull that provides information on how to draw on Ross board.  This is a textured scratch board for making drawings. A skilled artist, by varying the intensity of shading and, hence, accentuating the texture on the Ross board, can practically bring a two-dimensional drawing to life! According to Chuck Triplehorn, Joe was proficient in various drawing techniques and was particularly good at indicating shape and surface texture through the use of stippling.


Joe’s 1924 Master’s thesis (archived in the OSU Library holdings) contains a number of detailed illustrations of beetle species found in Pennsylvania. Here are some photos of the original plates.

 

Many of Joe’s publications contain original illustrations of specimens, signed with a simple and elegant ‘J.N.K.’ For example, “A new species of Mecas in Texas” includes a beautiful drawing of Mecas linsleyi and “A New Subspecies of Acmaeodera Quadrivittata Horn” a drawing of Acmaeodera quadrivittata cazie. For those interested in seeing more of Joe Knull’s scientific illustrations, PDFs of his publications are available in the Ohio Journal of Science via the OSU’s Knowledge Bank.


We never met Joe Knull in person. Chuck Triplehorn mentions Joe’s wry sense of humor, but overall our image of him was that of a tough, strict, mostly surly kind of guy. That is, until we saw his paintings, the ones he did for fun. There’s a certain vulnerability and playfulness that we did not associate with Knull before and that is very refreshing. There’s certainly more to Joe, as to most of us, than the work we do.

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

 

We thank Sally Wilson, Dorothy J. Knull’s nice, for the photos of Joe Knull’s paintings. She tells us that the paintings hang on her grandsons’ walls.


References:

☘ Knull, J. N. 1924. The Buprestidae of Pennsylvania. Thesis. The Ohio State University.

 

About the Authors: Dr. Luciana Musetti is an Entomologist and Curator of the Triplehorn Insect Collection; Dr. Norman Johnson is Professor of Entomology and Director of the Triplehorn Insect Collection.

The Knull Legacy

For the past several weeks, Zach Griebenow (undergraduate student assistant, blogger, majoring in Entomology), and I, with some help from Abbie Zimmer (volunteer, majoring in Art) and Dr. Natalia Molotievskiy, have been reorganizing the beetle holdings of the Triplehorn collection to reflect the changes in the classification of the Coleoptera at the superfamily and family levels (per Bouchard et al., 2011).  This is a laborious process that involves moving (almost) all of the 1,629 (heavy!) wooden drawers containing beetles. On any given day we may move 100-200 drawers in a couple of hours. We are now more than two-thirds of the way done and hope to finish ‘the big switcheroo’ in 2-3 weeks. This re-organization is a big step, and it will greatly facilitate the next phase of the re-curation and digitization of the beetles in the collection.

As we worked, moving drawers in and out of tall metal cabinets, I had a chance to look at the contents of the collection again, not with the critical eye of the professional whose job is to upgrade the curatorial status of it, but with the eye of the student who was seeing it for the first time. This rekindled my appreciation for Joe Knull’s work and his dedication to the collection.

Josef N. Knull

Josef N. Knull

For those unfamiliar with the Triplehorn Insect Collection’s history, Josef Nissley Knull (1891-1975) was hired in 1934 as the full-time curator of insects, and that marks the initiation of a formal entomological collection at Ohio State.

Joe Knull was notoriously meticulous in his care for the collection. He was held up by most entomologists across the country as the extreme example of tidiness and organization. We still have many drawers of beetles that were arranged by him: long series of accurately determined, properly mounted, neatly positioned, and perfectly preserved specimens. There are many stories about Joe’s strict rules in the collection: no smoking, no whistling, no careless people, absolutely no breaking specimens. He allegedly kept a list of all the people who broke specimens. Unfortunately, we have no hard evidence that this list existed, but those who knew him say it would be very much like Joe to do that.

For 28 ½ years Professor Knull devoted his career to the expansion and arrangement of the collection. Each summer of all those years, and those afterward during his retirement, was spent in the field with his wife and fellow entomologist, Dr. Dorothy Johnson Knull. Both were outstanding collectors, and the results of their efforts are reflected in the volume and diversity of material they added to the collection.

Joe was interested in all insects, but he was dedicated to the study of beetles. He published more than 190 papers between 1918 and 1975, particularly on the families Buprestidae, Cerambycidae, Elateridae and Cleridae (Davidson & Bellamy, 2002). The many years of field work with emphasis on beetles, particularly in the Midwestern and  Southwestern states, resulted in a truly outstanding collection of North American Coleoptera.

Professor Josef Knull retired from OSU in January of 1962, but continued collecting and contributing to the OSU collection until the early 1970’s. He died, here in Columbus, on April 24, 1975 at the age of 83. His legacy lives on in every publication generated by the use of the specimens he so carefully collected and preserved, in every visit the collection receives by scientists from the US and abroad, in every specimen image we make available online, in every database query of the 148,154 beetle specimens we have already digitized.

We started re-curating the beetles in 2011. To date, the Carabidae, all 41,466 of them, have been moved to archival quality trays and entirely digitized. Our student assistants are now deep into the digitization of the Tenebrionidae, a whopping 65,150 specimens.  Our volunteers are helping with collection organization. As we continue on with the task of re-curating and digitizing this vast beetle collection (estimated at around 1 million specimens), we keenly feel the responsibility of living up to Joe’s high standards of collection care. I hope he would approve of our work.

Check out the collection’s Facebook page for more photos of Joe Knull and other personalities in our history.

If you are interested in learning more about our work, or would like to volunteer to help us tackle this enormous project, please get in touch.

 

References:

☘ Davidson, J. M. & C. L. Bellamy. 2002. The Entomological Contributions of Josef Nissley Knull (1891 – 1975). Zootaxa 37: 1-24.

☘ Bouchard et al. 2011. Family-Group Names In Coleoptera (Insecta). ZooKeys 88: 1-972. https://doi.org/10.3897/zookeys.88.807

☘ An earlier version of this article appeared in the MBDNewsletter Spring Semester 2013, page 4.  Johnson & Musetti. The Knull Legacy – Joe Knull.

For more about Zach Griebenow, read his interview to Paige Brown Jarreau at From the Lab Bench blog.

 

About the Authors: Dr. Luciana Musetti is an Entomologist and Curator of the Triplehorn Insect Collection; Dr. Norman Johnson is Professor of Entomology and Director of the Triplehorn Insect Collection.

Interns on Internship


As we mentioned in our previous post, at the conclusion of the semester we asked our interns to share their impressions of the time they spent with us. We have taken the liberty of using some of their comments (highlighted in italics below) to provide a picture of their experience.

Insects are often thought of as the least appealing members of the taxonomic Kingdom Animalia. Even though most people recognize that they are, by definition, animals, people don’t like them as much as cuddly cats and dapper dolphins. Admittedly, this applies to myself as well.

This kind of impression is widespread and can be heard often. By providing a broad view of entomology we hope the interns developed a new perspective and will now write that last sentence in the past tense!

To our delight, all the interns came out of the internship with a better understanding of (and some experience on) the wide range of skills and knowledge needed in curatorial work.

Multiple tasks were laid before me throughout the semester, slowly building on previous knowledge and skills. … Originally, I had no idea how much time an entomologist may spend simply sitting in front of a computer. A portion of my time was spent databasing specimens, an important task allowing for collections to be easily found and identified. It has been made apparent how important this is when considering that millions of specimens fill the cabinets of the collection.”

“Through performing the … tasks, I was able to increase my knowledge of both the curation profession as well as the study of entomology in general”.

“… the only expectation I really had was that I would leave the internship having gained a lot of insect and museum-related knowledge that I had not had before. … this expectation was fulfilled with flying colors!”.

People have different styles of learning, and “doing” can often be more effective than listening or reading. The interns highlighted the importance of hands-on activities.

“… seeing the physical traits of different orders and families in person helped me to memorize these classifications for the General Entomology course, and gaining experience with pinning and labeling helped me to improve my collection project for the same course.”

“Whereas my entomology class was somewhat hard to grasp at times as a result of its lecture format, I found that hands-on activities (the same kind that are done by REAL curatorial staff in REAL museums) really ingrained a lot of the knowledge into my brain in a more profound way than surface-level memorization ever could.”



It is sometimes interesting to see how people react differently to the same task:

“I was able to further classify/identify the specimens by family using a taxonomic key. This exercise taught me how to use a key and how to look for specific features of insect physiology/morphology.”“Later came the classification by suborder and family, a grueling task using a key much like a personal narrative children’s book only with scientific terms and a lot of microscope adjusting. Though tedious and time consuming, I find it interesting to understand how such small characteristics may differentiate one insect family from another.”

Perhaps the most gratifying, though, was to see that at least a little taste of the fun and excitement that we find working with insects was also experienced by the interns:

“One of my favorite insects that I found while working in the collection was a cuckoo wasp, a very small organism but with brilliant colors that sparkle as if dipped in jewels. Everyway you turn the tiny hymenopteran, the colors seem to shift, ranging from a deep, rich blue to a bright metallic-like green with some splashes of vibrant red or orange. Not only is it beautiful but also to Dr. Musetti’s excitement it is a parasitoid wasp, laying eggs in a host species.”

Ceratochrysis perpulchra, OSUC 96424

Ceratochrysis perpulchra (Cresson), a beautiful cuckoo wasp specimen from the collection. ID# OSUC 96424. This is not the one that Ellen found, but similar. Ellen’s cuckoo wasp is still in the freezer, and will be used for DNA extraction.

Taking on an internship is a pretty serious commitment of time on the part of the student, and we hope that it turned out to be time well invested. We have all learned from the experience, and we will use what we have learned to continue to improve. Even if a professional job as curator is not in the interns’ future, at least we have made a contribution to a future taxpaying citizenry that will understand the whys and wherefores of an insect collection.

“The past ten weeks have been quite the eye opening experience for me. Science is tedious work that I am happy to tackle. I have learned things I did not know I was interested in, as well as things I may not want to spend the rest of my life doing. Not only has this internship helped me to understand what it takes to have a collection, but I also have a compelling experience that may help me stand out from the others when searching for a career in entomology.”

”Overall, I feel that this internship has been very beneficial to me as both a student and a person. It provided me with a better background in entomology, it showed me the importance of curatorial work, and it gave me workplace experience that will benefit me in future careers both inside and outside of entomology.”

”I was able to get a complete picture of what entomology is like in the museum world, which, to me, is the overarching purpose of the (internship) program itself.”


Snapshots of the interns’ lab notebooks:


2016 Interns:

  • Ellen Dunkle
  • Alexandria Ent
  • Hannah McKenzie

About the Authors: Dr. Natalia Munteanu Molotievskiy is an Entomologist and Guest Scholar, Dr. Luciana Musetti is an Entomologist and Curator, & Dr. Norman Johnson is Professor of Entomology and Director of the Triplehorn Insect Collection.

What We Learned From Our Insect Curation Internship


triplehorn-scarletbandLast semester we of the Triplehorn Insect Collection offered our first Insect Curation Internship. I was pleasantly surprised with the interest generated by it. There were over 380 visits to the internship announcement and 207 visits to my post “Internship, Volunteering or Job?” on this blog.  Fifty one (51) undergraduate students (of those 49 were women!) and 2 graduate students inquired about the internship. Of the 12 students interviewed we accepted 3 for the Fall 2016 internship. I also received requests for information from a few colleagues who are planning to offer similar internship activities in their collections and/or institutions. Here’s a summary of what we did.

Our overall goal was to provide OSU students, both graduate and undergraduate, with a structured, mentored, hands-on experience on collection curation techniques and the preparation of research quality insect specimens. Activities were planned specifically for the internship. Our requirements were simple: patience, attention to detail, good organizational skills and a minimum commitment of 5 hours/week for 10 weeks.

Interns received handouts containing our broad goals and specific objectives for the internship, and were asked to write down their own goals and expectations for the internship. At the end of the semester we did a two-way evaluation of the internship, from the perspective of the mentors and from the perspective of the interns. They also submitted a report of their activities and were asked to comment on what they thought of the internship.

From theory to practice

Interns received training on basic preparation standards and techniques used in insect collections, from sorting bulk samples to mounting and adding a label to the specimen, to entering the specimen information in the collection database. They worked on identification of the most common orders of insects and had the opportunity to take high resolution images of dry specimens. Weekly discussions involved broad topics of interest such as the importance of biological collections, why and how to deposit scientific vouchers in collections, challenges of long term preservation of collections, etc. Interns received handouts and/or electronic links to reading material related to our topics of discussion. Each intern kept a lab notebook with records of all their internship activities, with date, brief description of the activity, time spent on the activity, plus any difficulties they encountered, questions, etc. Those records served as the basis for their internship report, due on the closing day.

Challenges to offering an internship

Time:  A great deal of time went into the planning of the internship. We defined goals, developed activities, prepared handouts and tool kits. During the semester, we worked closely with the interns, individually and in groups, mentoring and evaluating their progress as we went along.

Space & Equipment:  We do not have much idle space or equipment in the collection. Work space allocation to accommodate both our working staff and our interns was one of our major concerns (and cause of stress) in the planning of the internship.

Credit where it’s due

Our three interns, Ellen Dunkle, Hannah McKenzie, and Alexandria Ent, were very diligent and focused. They set the bar high for future interns. I also want to acknowledge the terrific work done by our guest scholar, Dr. Natalia Munteanu Molotievskiy, who instructed the interns on general insect taxonomy and on recognition of Coleoptera families.

Sorting funOur goal is to repeat the internship offering in 2017 as we already have students interested. Watch for the announcement some time during spring and come learn how to build a top notch insect collection with us.

 


About the Author: Dr. Luciana Musetti is an Entomologist, Parasitoid Wasp Specialist, Curator of the Triplehorn Insect Collection. Find me @osuc_curator on Instagram and on Twitter

Historic perspective


In a previous post in this blog, readers were asked if they have ever wondered about the history of the Museum of Biological Diversity.

I’m a bit of a history buff and interested in how things happened back in the day. It’s a bit painful to admit it, but I’m one of the few faculty and staff left in the Museum who was actually present when we moved into our current building on Kinnear Road back in 1992. Unfortunately, it seems that we don’t have coherent and comprehensive written documentation of how we morphed from a bunch of separate collections into our current structure. But I thought it would be fascinating to see what pieces of history are available.

I went back to the Triplehorn Insect Collection files and found, for example, the second part of the 1982 Association of Systematics Collections newsletter (Vol. 10, No. 2), the one that refers to the Triplehorn collection. I also found a lot of historical records that I did not even know were there (thanks to my co-author, Dr. Musetti, for her careful curation of the collection’s historical documents and records.)

The Museum of Biological Diversity (MBD) at the Ohio State University is a relatively young facility. The building was dedicated in 1992. The objective was to house the OSU biological collections, well, with the exception of the Orton Geology Museum. In the 24 years since, the outside face of the museum has not changed much, but the faces inside – both the people and the physical layout – have changed a fair bit.

We have found some early documents of the Museum’s opening (see photos below), including the agenda of its official dedication on Dec. 3, 1992. (PDF version)



Gary Floyd was the Dean of the College of Biological Sciences in those days, and the University President was E. Gordon Gee (in his first stint in Columbus). Guest speakers included the eminent Peter Raven, then Director of the Missouri Botanical Garden, a member of the National Academy of Sciences, and a list of other honors and titles as long as your arm.

One of the bits of historica that I found interesting was an early mission statement. It reflects the typical University mandate of excellence in teaching, research and service, but supplemented by the aspiration to be “an important public attraction.” Also included was a quick fact sheet about each of the collections.

There is also evidence of the lack of history. For example, this Ohio State celebratory newsletter from 1995 (see photos below) highlights 125 events and accomplishments that made the university great, but does not mention the dedication of the new Museum, which had happened just two years before. I was shocked, shocked I say, to find that omission! Well, the University’s sesquicentennial is coming up in just a few years, so there will be a chance for that situation to be rectified.



The individual collections that make up the MBD have a long history that starts well before our move in 1992 and, in some cases, dates back to the beginnings of the University.  Faculty, curators, and other personnel associated with the collections have been saving tidbits of our history for as long as the collections exist. Each of the collections has records and anecdotes of that history, including photos, copies of newspaper and magazine articles, official documents, etc., so my co-author and I trust that we will continue to revisit this general topic in future blog posts. We hope you enjoy it. Let us know by adding a comment here on the blog or via the Museum Facebook page.

About the authorsDr. Norman Johnson (Professor in EEOB & Entomology, and the Director of the Triplehorn Insect Collection) co-wrote this post with Dr. Luciana Musetti (Entomologist and the current Curator of the Triplehorn Insect Collection.)  Images belong to the Triplehorn Insect Collection.

Double Treat: a tale of one donation & two collections


Many kinds of mites are associated with insects. Some feed on the insects, while others just hitch a ride. When you work in an insect collection it is not uncommon to find tiny mite “guests” attached to the bodies of our specimens.

As described in a previous post in this blog, when the OSU Acarology Collection acquired the Asher E. Treat Mite Collection, they received a large number of boxes containing slide-mounted mites and a few oversized Schmidt boxes packed with dry mounted moth specimens. The mites were originally collected on (or in!) these moths.

Asher Treat wrote a whole book about mites and the moths they associate with. Like the mites in the Treat collection, the moths are research vouchers, the specimens that Treat referred to (and even illustrated) in his publications.

As with all research voucher specimens, the Treat moths need to be properly preserved for the future and, when necessary, made available to scientists who might want to examine the specimens. As the Triplehorn Insect Collection is a well-known public research voucher repository, we were asked to hold the Treat moth vouchers. At the time we received them from our colleagues in Acarology, we posted some images in the collection’s Facebook page.


The first stop for the Treat moths was the insect collection -40°C freezer. The extreme cold kills any potential pests that might be hiding with the incoming specimens. These pests, things like carpet beetles (dermestids), eat dead, dried insects, reducing them to a pile of dust. So it’s essential that we do not introduce them into the collection! Later on we gently moved all the moths (and/or pieces of them) to our regular storage trays and drawers. Many of the specimens did not have individual labels attached to them. So to avoid confusion, we transferred the specimens to new trays, but kept them in the exact same organization used by Treat. This whole process took several weeks.

During the initial curation we noticed that many of the moths had detailed labels, including the number and kinds of mites removed from them. Some even mention that they were photographed for a publication. However, other specimens don’t have much information associated with them at all. It’s not clear if those are research vouchers or just regular specimens that Treat had in his collection but did not use for publication.


As we curate the collection further, the confirmed research vouchers will receive voucher labels (green, makes it easy to see them in the collection) and a unique identification number. The specimen label data will be digitized and added to our online database, and finally the specimens will be stored according to the moth group (family, genus, species) they belong to. Besides the specimen label data, we will eventually have images of all vouchers specimens.

I am hoping that as the Acarology collection completes the curation and digitization of the Treat mite specimens, we will have answers to some of our questions regarding the voucher status of the specimens. And since we share the same database platform, xBio:D developed here at the Triplehorn collection, we will be able to easily associate the mite specimens with their moth hosts.

The curation of the Asher Treat moth voucher collection will demand many more hours of work by our student assistants and volunteers.

Sunset Moth in the Treat collection.

Sunset Moth in the Treat collection.

If insect curation is the kind of activity you think you would like to learn (or maybe you’re already an expert?!), come talk to me! Volunteer some of your time and talent to help us make the Treat moth vouchers available to the world. Volunteers make a tremendous contribution to the collection and, therefore, to science.

If volunteering is not your thing, maybe you will consider making a donation to the C.A. Triplehorn Insect Collection Friends Fund (#314967). Your gift will revert 100% to the collection and support the dedicated students & interns that work in the collection while getting trained to become the biodiversity scientists of the future. Thank you for your interest!

About the Author: Dr. Luciana Musetti is an Entomologist and the current Curator of the Triplehorn Insect Collection.

Insect Collection Snapshots

In our last post, Norman and I discussed what we understand by internship, volunteering, and student work. Here in the Triplehorn collection, student interns and volunteers work side-by-side with our staff, faculty, and student assistants to learn and to preserve the collection for the future. Some tasks are fun, others are tedious, but all tasks are important. Instead of wordy descriptions, I selected some photos that illustrate the kinds of activities in our daily routine. This is by no means a comprehensive list, but I hope it will help to give you a general idea.

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

If you are interested in learning more about insect collections, insect curation, insect specimen preservation and photography for scientific study (or just for fun!), or have any questions about the Triplehorn Insect Collection, please feel free to drop me a note at osuc-curator@osu.edu.

About the Author: Luciana Musetti is an Entomologist and the Curator of the Triplehorn Insect Collection.

Internship, Volunteering or Job?


We at the Triplehorn Insect Collection frequently receive inquiries from students and even professionals seeking opportunities to learn about insects and insect collections. Some people are looking for training in a specific area, others have a more general interest. We also receive many inquiries regarding volunteering and research opportunities in the collection. We try to accommodate as many requests as our staff and resources allow.

In recent years we have had many undergraduate student interns in the collection. Most of them were Entomology majors at Ohio State, some were majoring in Biology, Zoology, and event in Art. We also had student interns from other colleges and universities. Some of these students spent a summer with us, others took internships during the semester for school credit. Some stayed for several semesters, others only a couple of weeks.

Because of the growing interest, we decided that it was time to make the internship offers a bit more structured. A few weeks ago we announced two internship opportunities for the fall semester, one for insect imaging and one for insect curation. As the email inquiries started arriving, it quickly became clear that there was interest (we received 25 inquiries in 10 days), but there was also some confusion on what an internship is versus an undergrad research experience, an undergrad job, or volunteering.

So what is an internship? How does that differ from volunteering? Is internship the same as research experience? What’s the deal with internship for school credit?

Here is our take:

Internship – Our understanding of internship is that it is a ‘mentored, practical learning experience in a professional environment’. Mentored, because it’s important that the experience be structured and directed. An intern, in our opinion, should not be given a task and left to fend for themselves. Our interns come in during regular hours only and are always monitored by a trained staff or experience student worker. Practical emphasizes that the intern will take what they have learned, both previously and as part of the internship experience, and put it to good use. The word experience has popped up several times: this is meant to emphasize (as does practical) that we want to do more than just talk about the work we do, we want the interns to actually do it. Finally, we mean professional environment not in terms of funds, but in terms of being serious and implementing whatever the best practices are.

There is something that is deliberately missing in that definition, though, and that is any mention of financial compensation. Some places offer paid internships. We do not. First, we simply cannot afford it. Second, what we provide is an educational opportunity in a university environment and we take the responsibility to make it a structured, mentored experience.

Beyond the practical learning experience, students can get school credit for their efforts by enrolling in formal internship course (in our department this is EEOB 3191, 1-3 credit hours; other departments offer some form of internship courses as well). And whether one enrolls for credit or not, at the end of the day the intern – we hope – has made the kind of personal connection with their mentor that makes for a substantive and useful letter of recommendation later on when they apply for a real job, grad school, med school, etc.

Note that research internships involve actively working in a research project under supervision of a faculty or research scientist. That is not the kind of internships we are currently offering. The broad goal of our insect curation internship is to familiarize students with the work involved in maintaining and enhancing a research quality insect collection. Specific objectives involve learning the basics of insect specimen preparation (sort, dry, mount, and label insect specimens). In addition, student interns are offered opportunities to learn other techniques and protocols, depending on their progress, their (and our) time availability, and their interest.


Volunteering – The core of volunteering is that the person donates their time and effort in support of an organization, projects, etc. As such, it can overlap a lot with our concept of intern. But it differs, basically, in that we’re not necessarily promising a well-rounded, holistic and mentored experience. Volunteers come to us willing to help in whatever capacity because they think our work is valuable in some way. We try to match the tasks with the experience that volunteers already have: one person might be particularly good with organizational skills, another with the fine motor skills needed to mount and label specimens. And while interns are typically young persons looking to gain skills and experience, our volunteers run the gamut in ages, from teenagers to retirees. Right now we have two amazing volunteers: Lauralee Thompson, who has just completed one year of volunteering with us on Sept 8, and Jan Nishimura.


Student Job – When we advertise a ‘undergraduate curatorial assistant’ job, it means 1) we can only hire undergraduate students (that’s what our money is earmarked for), 2) we have a particular set of goals to accomplish in a particular time and we offer training on the specific tasks related to the job, and 3) it is just the nature of an insect collection, in particular, the large number of specimens, that the tasks are likely to be repetitive and tedious.

In the end, though, students who are hired, say, to do specimen data entry, end up learning a lot about the various aspects of the curation as they will have the need to perform some of them, they also learn about geography, computers, and, no surprise, about insects. For young persons, jobs like the ones we offer are also great opportunities to learn good work habits and to foster and demonstrate attributes like reliability, honesty, diligence, perseverance, ability to learn and to work with others in a collaborative way. Then, this too can translate into the kind of reference letter that really makes a difference to a potential new employer.

We currently have two specimen digitization projects funded by the National Science Foundation, one for beetles, and another, that just started, for butterflies and moths. Neither of these projects would be feasible without the work of our undergrad curatorial assistants.


One thing is common between interns, volunteers, and student workers: they are all learning and they all need care and attention from the collection staff. It is important for us, staff, supervisors, faculty, to engage with them and to nurture their interest in the work we do. That not only helps to keep them motivated, but it also fosters good interactions between everyone in the collection, and provides them with a positive experience that they will hopefully remember and cherish for the rest of their lives.


Current Digitization Projects:

Digitization PEN: Integration of data from the Triplehorn Insect Collection with the Southwestern Collections of Arthropods Network. Award #1503659. Start Date: July 1, 2015, Estimated End: June 30, 2018. Investigator(s): Norman Johnson & Luciana Musetti.

Digitization TCN: Collaborative Research: Lepidoptera of North America Network: Documenting Diversity in the Largest Clade of Herbivores (LepNet). Award #1602081. Start Date: July 1, 2016, Estimated End: June 30, 2020. Subcontract from the University of Northern Arizona to Norman Johnson & Luciana Musetti.

 


If you would like to know more about our internship program, about the digitization projects underway in the collection, or about possible collection-based undergraduate research experience, please contact us at osuc-curator@osu.edu.

 

About the Authors: Luciana Musetti is an Entomologist and Curator of the Triplehorn Insect Collection. Norman Johnson is a Professor in the Department of EEOB and Director of the Triplehorn Insect Collection.