Triplehorn

Explaining Science – taxonomy of parasitoid wasps

Professor Norm Johnson, Director of our C.A. Triplehorn Insect Collection, studies systematics of parasitoid wasps and so do his students. Graduate student Elijah Talamas collected many insect specimens during his PhD work at Ohio State and revised several taxa. Recently he published a photographic catalog of some primary types of parasitoid wasps in the large insect order Hymenoptera.

samurai wasp, Trissolcus japonicus
Trissolcus euschisti, an egg‐parasitoid of stink bugs

I contacted Elijah in his current position at the The Florida Department of Agriculture and Consumer Service and asked him to give us some insights into his life as a researcher. He recently published results from work he did as a a postdoctoral fellow for the U.S. Department of Agriculture at the National Museum of Natural History in Washington DC:

Elijah TalamasElijah: “I am the curator of Hymenoptera (bees, ants and wasps) at the Florida State Collection of Arthropods, which is part of the Florida Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services. I have broad interests in the taxonomy, morphology, and evolution of platygastroid wasps, especially groups with potential for biological control. I was trained by Dr. Norman Johnson at The Ohio State University, and maintain active collaboration with him and members of his lab.”

Angelika: “What species did you study?”

Elijah: “As a taxonomist, I study many species and genera in the superfamily Platygastroidea. These are parasitoid wasps that require development in a host to complete their life cycle, i.e. their larvae live as parasites that eventually kill their hosts. The past few years have focused on the genus Trissolcus which are parasitoids of stink bug eggs.”

(Angelika’s note: You may recall that the brown marmorated stink bug is an invasive species from Asia, now found in the eastern half of the U.S., as well as California, Oregon, Washington, Arizona, New Mexico and Texas. You may have seen one in your home, especially in late fall when they are looking for a sheltered place to overwinter)

Angelika: “What was your research questions in this particular study?”

Elijah: “A typical taxonomic project will “revise” a genus and involves many questions: What are the characters that define the genus? How many species does it contain and how do we identify them? The separation of organisms into species is the foundation of organismal biology and this is one of the jobs of a taxonomist.”

brown marmorated stink bugAngelika: “What do we know already, and why is it important to know this?”

Elijah: “We know that many parasitoid wasps attack the eggs of agricultural pests. This is important because they are often the best, and sometimes only solution to control numbers. The invasive brown marmorated stink bug is an invasive pest that can be found in Ohio, and it is not controlled by natural enemies in the United States. However, there are parasitoid wasps in its native distribution in Asia that kill the stink bugs’ eggs very efficiently. Biological control research about these wasps requires thorough study of their morphology to ensure that
species are properly identified.”

Angelika: “How did you study this question?”

Elijah: “I study parasitoid wasps by examining them under a microscope, documenting their anatomical structures, and the variability that can occur within a species. This often requires examination of specimens from all over the  world, and sometimes international travel is required to access specimens in foreign institutions and to collect fresh material. I rely heavily on photography to document and share information about these wasps, but I also use other techniques, including scanning electron microscopy and analysis of DNA.”

When looking at detailed features one may notice that some of them are different from how they were originally described and the specimen may be more closely related to to another group of specimens. This means that sometimes the classification of the species needs to be revised and renamed to reflect these new relationships. For example, in the figures below you can see the holotype, the specimen that was used to describe the species Psilanteris nigriclavata. This species was originally described with the name Opisthacantha nigiclavatus in 1905. The specimen was embedded in glue, which obscured some of its diagnostic characters and hampered a clear assessment of its identity. As part of this project, Elijah dissolved some of the glue and determined that it shared characteristics with other species in the genus Psilanteris. Thus this species was moved to this genus and now operates under the name Psilanteris nigriclavata.

62 head, mesosoma, metasoma, lateral view; 63 head and mesosoma, anterodorsal view (sk=skaphion); 64 head and mesosoma, lateral view. Scale bars in millimeters.

Angelika:  “Why is this research important?”

Elijah: “Taxonomy informs us about many aspects of the biological world. It is the science that reveals the planet’s biological diversity and discovers the evolutionary relationships between organisms. It enables other disciplines to identify organisms for the studies of behavior and ecology, and applications with large scale societal impact, such as biological control of invasive pests.”

Angelika: “What do you hope to have achieved with this study?”

Elijah: “For parasitoid wasps in the superfamily Platygastroidea, this study provides photographs of all holotype specimens in the National Musuem of Natural History and makes them freely available online. Taxonomists all over the world now have immediate access to these specimens through the internet, enabling them to make better informed decisions for classification, and more refined hypotheses about evolution.”

Let us know if you have any questions, we would like to hear form you!

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Some explanations you may find helpful:

Anterodorsal means in front and toward the back.

A holotype is a single type specimen upon which the description and name of a new species is based.

Lateral means from the side.

The body of arthropods is composed of three parts, from front to back, the prosoma, mesosoma, metasoma.

A parasitoid is an insect whose larvae live as parasites that eventually kill their hosts.

Superfamily is an intermediate classification rank directly above family and might contain one or more related families. For example, Muroidea, a superfamily of rodents, contains six families of rats, mice, hamsters and gerbils. Taxonomists use several levels to classify living things. They follow the International Code of Zoological Nomenclature which specifically mentions superfamily, family, subfamily, tribe, subtribe, genus, subgenus, species, subspecies.

Reference: Talamas, E. J., Thompson, J., Cutler, A., Schoenberger, S. F., Cuminale, A., Jung, T., … & Alvarez, E. (2017). An online photographic catalog of primary types of Platygastroidea (Hymenoptera) in the National Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Institution. Journal of Hymenoptera Research, 56, 187.

About the Author: Angelika Nelson is the curator of the Borror Laboratory of Bioacoustics and the Outreach and social media manager for the museum. Here she interviewed Elijah Talamas, currently Postdoctoral researcher with the U.S. Department of Agriculture at the National Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Institution in Washington DC.

Flight of the Butterfly

What does re-animated life in the Triplehorn insect collection look like? What if a butterfly took flight from its drawer? Watch for yourself: Flight of the Butterfly by Tamara Sabbagh

THANK YOU Luciana Musetti, curator of the OSU Triplehorn Insect collection for facilitating the students’ visit.

About the Author: Angelika Nelson is the outreach and multi-media coordinator at the Museum of Biological Diversity and facilitates visits of school classes and students.

*** Which of the animations is your favorite? ***

Our big day is tomorrow

Tomorrow, Saturday April 22, from 10 AM – 4 PM we will open our doors and welcome all of you to visit our hidden treasures in the natural history collections of The Ohio State University. Stop by and talk to the curators who meticulously keep these specimens and make them available to students and researchers for study throughout the year. This is your chance each year to see what we do and to support our efforts.

The event is FREE and so is parking. We will have many activities for children including face painting, the very popular bugs-in-goo, a live arthropod zoo … and this year new, for anyone over 15 years, guided sessions on scientific illustration, drawing natural history specimens.

Enjoy some photos from last year events

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The set-up for tomorrow is in full swing, here is what I have seen so far

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About the Author: Angelika Nelson is curator of the Borror Laboratory of Bioacoustics and coordinates social media and outreach at the museum.

*** We hope to see you tomorrow ***

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.

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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.

Beetle specimens, as Joe Knull arranged them
Beetle specimens, as Joe Knull arranged them
Original collection drawers made by inmates of the Ohio Penitentiary.
Original collection drawers made by inmates of the Ohio Penitentiary
Detail of the original labeling of specimen drawers
Detail of the original labeling of specimen drawers
Beetle specimens, as Joe Knull arranged them, detail
Beetle specimens, as Joe Knull arranged them, detail
Beetle specimens, as Joe Knull arranged them, close up
Beetle specimens, as Joe Knull arranged them, close up
Leaf beetles (Family Chrysomelidae) neatly arranged in the collection
Leaf beetles (Family Chrysomelidae) neatly arranged in the collection
Joe Knull was a specialist in wood boring beetles, like these buprestids
Joe Knull was a specialist in wood boring beetles, like these buprestids
Longhorn beetles (Family Cerambycidae)
Longhorn beetles (Family Cerambycidae)
Longhorn beetles (Family Cerambycidae), detail
Longhorn beetles (Family Cerambycidae), detail
Specimens collected and prepared by Knull
Specimens collected and prepared by Knull
Specimens collected and prepared by Knull
Specimens collected and prepared by Knull
Some of the drawers containing longhorn beetles
Some of the drawers containing longhorn beetles
Zach Griebenow moving a drawer as part of reorganization of the beetle collection
Zach Griebenow moving a drawer as part of reorganization of the beetle collection
Newly curated and digitized specimens
Newly curated and digitized specimens
Newly curated and digitized specimens
Newly curated and digitized specimens
Specimens collected and prepared by Knull
Specimens collected and prepared by Knull

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

Show stoppers

The specimen digitization project that we are about to start at the Triplehorn Insect Collection will create a large body of information about butterflies.  Those data, combined with the data from all the collections that are part of LepNet, will be a monumental resource for scientific research. The information on the specimen labels and the images of selected specimens will be fully available online and accessible to all interested parties, from scientists to government agencies to 4-H programs to school classes to the general insect-loving public.

Ohio State has never been a powerhouse of butterfly research, nevertheless we hold a very interesting collection of these fascinating insects. For example, we have some butterfly specimens that were collected in 1880s (they are as old as the Statue of Liberty!). Some of our specimens were collected in natural habitats that are now gone, completely modified by human activity. We have representatives of rare and endangered species. The Parshall donation added depth and breadth to our collection. What amazing new knowledge will we gain from accessing all those data together? The next months and years will be interesting ones!

While we wait for the data, we can enjoy the beauty of the specimens in the collection.

Sulphur butterflies in the parshall collection
Butterflies in the Triplehorn collection
Oeneis chryxus from the Yukon Territory
Dogface butterflies in the Parshall collection
Peacock butterflies recently pinned
Butterflies collected long ago, but pinned only recently
Butterflies to be mounted
Butterflies collected long ago, but pinned only recently
Butterflies to be mounted
Butterflies in the Parshall collection
Saturniidae moths
Moths in the Triplehorn collection
Tiny blue butterflies
Detail of the wing of Saturniidae moths
Butterflies in the Parshall collection

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

Up close and personal: insects and molluscs

 

Here’s one question I get frequently from visitors: “Why, oh, why, isn’t the Museum of Biological Diversity open to everyone every day?” That’s a very good question! Here’s an answer. Unlike institutions such as the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History, the Field Museum, the Carnegie Museum, or our neighbor the Cleveland Museum among others, our museum largely grew out of a background of higher education and research.  We have a different structure and a different mission than these other very fine institutions.  The most visible outcome of these differences is the fact that we don’t have large display areas and exhibits. We also do not have staff dedicated to public outreach. But it’s good to keep in mind that the MBD collections vary in the kinds of services they provide to the community. Each is unique in it’s own way.

My little corner of the MBD is the Triplehorn Insect Collection. We are a research facility and most of our specimens are only accessible to professional scientists and scientists in training (graduate students, postdoctoral associates, etc.)  This policy gets me in trouble with a lot of people who love insects and would like to come in to “see” (many times that means “touch”) the collection.  So, before anyone else gets hot under the collar about that, let’s try to understand what that policy means.

Dried insect specimens are as fragile as they are colorful and beautiful. The more they are handled and exposed to light and humidity, the faster and more likely they are to get damaged.  The insect specimens in the Triplehorn collection are the result of more than 100 years of careful collecting and curation, many of them were collected in forests and meadows and prairies that do not exist anymore. These specimens are, literally, irreplaceable, and it is our responsibility to keep them intact for many more long years.

Aquatic beetles.

Aquatic beetles. Part of the holdings of the Triplehorn Insect Collection.

 

Because of that, we restrict access to the specimens to only the people who must use them for scientific study, professionals who have lots of experience with museum specimens and therefore are less likely to damage our precious charges. As the curator of the collection, it is my responsibility to protect and preserve the specimens for the long run. To do that I have to enforce the “restricted access” policy.

Now, the fact that we are a research collection does not mean we don’t welcome visitors.  Quite the contrary! We are committed to sharing our knowledge and love of biodiversity with everyone interested.  While we don’t have exhibits per se, we frequently and happily provide tours of the collection to people from the local community. Or even not so local: our audience is wide and varied, from k-12 to university classes, to family or neighborhood groups, to homeschool groups, to citizen scientists and individuals interested in local and global insect diversity.

 

Up to now we have been scheduling visits as requests come in and our time allows, but starting this month we in the insect collection will be teaming up with our colleagues in the Mollusc Division of the MBD to offer guided tours of the two collections to the general public on set dates.  This initiative comes as a response to the increased interest in the collections, demonstrated by the increase in visit requests.

Tours will still be arranged in advance, but by specifying which days are open for tours we hope to make the whole process a bit easier and more predictable. The set dates might not work for all visitors, but by working together and establishing a structure for tour activities, we hope to continue serving the community without drastically increasing the work-load of our already overworked staff.

 

The next available dates for insect collection/mollusc collection joint tours are Friday, October 23rd and Friday, November 6th, from 1pm to 4pm. Total estimated tour time for the two collections is between 45 min to 1 hour/group. Group size limit is 20 adults.  For more information or to schedule a guided tour, please contact Tom Watters or Luciana Musetti.

 

About the Author: Dr. Luciana Musetti is an entomologist and Curator of the C.A. Triplehorn Insect Collection.

Your yellow bowl is our YPT

 

Collecting insects is one of the many activities of staff and volunteers at the Triplehorn Insect Collection. Each time we go out in the field and collect we create a tiny snapshot of the insect fauna of that specific place and date.  It’s far from complete, but adds to our knowledge nonetheless. We do not need to go far to find insects that no one has ever studied before. Even in our own backyard, next door to the Museum of Biological Diversity, we find new or rare insect species and discover new facts about known species.

One of the methods we frequently use to collect small flying insects is the pan trap – a bowl with water and a drop of clear, unscented liquid soap.  The soap breaks the surface tension of the water and makes the insects sink.  The color yellow (bright yellow!) attracts many insects, including the parasitic wasps that several of us in the collection study.  Our yellow pan traps, (or YPTs for short) are simple plastic party bowls.  For best results we leave the YPTs out in the field for about 24 hours.  After that we remove the catch, and start the cycle again: fill the YPTs with water, add soap, leave for 24 hours, remove catch. We usually set up 25-50 YPTs in one spot and that’s one sample.

There are a couple of variations on how to empty the traps: scooping the specimens with a fine fish net, or pouring the content of the trap through the net. Either way the specimens get separated from the soapy water, and then are carefully washed with clean water to remove all the soap residue. Once washed, the specimens are preserved in 95% ethanol and placed in a freezer.  That slows the degradation of their DNA and allows for molecular level studies.  Later, we sort the specimens into groups (beetles, wasps, leafhoppers, etc.) and start the long process of specimen preparation for study.  The YPTs are washed and saved for the next collecting season.

Click or tap on the image to enlarge.

Collecting locality across the street from the Museum.
Collecting locality next door to the Museum.
Yellow pan traps are labeled with our name & phone number.
Set pans on the ground. Avoid direct sunlight, but don’t hide them.
Add a drop of soap to each pan trap.
Add water to each pan trap.
Add water to each pan trap, don’t overfill.
Alternatively, mix soap and water before adding to the traps. Photo by H. Clebsch.
Relax and let the YPTs work for 24 hours.
Single YPT after 24 hours in the field. Awesome catch!
Check the content of the trap, remove twigs, leaves, and other debris.
Pour (or gently scoop) the content of the trap in fine fish net. Discard soapy water.
Carefully wash the content of the yellow pan trap with clean water several times. Discard the water.
Insect specimens collected with yellow pan traps. That’s one sample.
Transfer the specimens to 95% alcohol for better preservation. Add collecting label to each sample.
Sort specimens in each sample to large groups (ex.: beetles, wasps, leafhoppers, etc.)
Sort small specimens. We need to use a microscope for that.
Wash, dry and save YPTs for next collecting season.

 

A heartfelt thanks to the people in these photos: Zach Hurley (collecting, adding soap, adding water, washing, sorting), Matt Elder (collecting), Norman Johnson (checking the catch, emptying YPT), Hans Clebsch (adding water to YPTs); and to the anonymous biker going by the Museum building.

 

About the Author: Dr. Luciana Musetti is the Curator of the Triplehorn Insect Collection at Ohio State University. All photos are courtesy of the author, except for the one of Hans Clebsch.