As I approach the end of my second year as a Curatorial Assistant at the Triplehorn Insect Collection, I wanted to reflect on the experience of the largest and most comprehensive assignment I have had thus far – the curation of the long-horned beetles, the family Cerambycidae.
When I started as an undergraduate assistant more than three years ago, I worked primarily with beetles as part of a National Science Foundation grant funding the curation of our large beetle collection. Over time, I became adept with each of the many steps in the curatorial process. The first project I took the lead on was curating the cerambycids, a family of great scientific and economic importance, and one of the largest families in the collection.
The legacy cerambycid collection was housed in 3 steel cabinets with an additional 2 cabinets of pro tem material. Our pro tem collection is a subcategory of identified specimens consisting of donations, voucher depositions, specimens that were loaned to researchers and returned (sometimes years later) with more precise identification, and specimens from our own collecting. The entire cerambycid collection now consists of 31,573 individual specimens representing 1,193 different taxa, held in 119 drawers and taking up almost 5 full cabinets!
Taking on this project was a sizable challenge for me, but no step was unwelcome. I embraced this project with curiosity and joy, learned a great deal along the way, and ultimately completed it in record time.
The term “curation” is broad and used for many of the everyday activities we do. The main goal is to ensure the safety and long-term preservation of the specimens as well as to make them accessible for future researchers. The number of steps and procedures that go into making that main goal happen can be difficult for a newcomer to imagine.
So, let’s look at the main steps in the process.
Step 1: Don’t yank them out! The move from old cork-lined to new foam-lined unit trays
Within a drawer, specimens are pinned into small removable boxes called unit trays, with one taxon per tray. This modular arrangement makes it easier to rearrange the specimens if needed. When the specimens were originally incorporated into the collection, the unit trays had a soft and flexible cork lining, and insect pins were pushed into the cork. Over the years, however, the cork has hardened and become extremely brittle. The pins are now practically cemented in place, and so it is very difficult to remove specimens.
My first task was to remove the specimens from the cork and place them into new unit trays that have an archival-quality foam lining. This step took the greatest amount of time, as it required using minuscule and precise movements. Each pin had to be pried out of the cork-lined tray with large pliers, and the point of the pin had to be carefully sanded to remove cork debris and rust. These are the same tasks that my colleague Alejandro described here in his blog post about working with the lycaenid butterfly collection (the blues and hairstreaks).
There are two very different ways collectors pin and display the antennae of cerambycids. We see the antennae wrapped around the specimen as on the right most often, thankfully. Monochamus notatus.
There are two very different ways collectors pin and display the antennae of cerambycids. We see the antennae wrapped around the specimen as on the right most often, thankfully. Monochamus notatus.
For each group within the Cerambycidae, some specimens had been identified to the level of species, while others were only identified to genus or even subfamily. For example, in the genus Monochamus (the pine sawyers), the collection has specimens of 11 species or subspecies. However, there are a few specimens identified (so far!) only as Monochamus. The subspecies are arranged in the drawers by alphabetical species name order, and specimens identified only to genera come after the identified species.
The order in the drawers would be as such: Monochamus carolinensis, Monochamus clamator clamator, Monochamus clamator rubigineus, Monochamus clamator, Monochamus notatus, Monochamus sp.
Step 2: Check names of species and reorganize into subfamilies
The collection is largely organized by scientific name. All the beetles (Order Coleoptera) are kept together in the same area. Within the order, specimens are further organized by superfamily, family, subfamily, genus, and, when available, species and subspecies. Other subdivisions might be used, but this is the current standard in our collection.
Within a subfamily of cerambycids, for example, the Lamiinae, the genera are all organized in alphabetical order (all the As, followed by the Bs, and so on), and within each genus the species are alphabetized as well.
One of the first drawers in the Lamiinae subfamily, many different sizes of beetles all in the same subfamily.
Scientific names may change over the years – I won’t go into the weeds as to why and how this happens, that is, unless you have a couple of hours to dive into the history of scientific taxonomy and nomenclature. The important thing to know here is that there are taxonomic catalogues, produced by experts in a group of insects, that contain all scientific names published for a particular group and the changes that occurred in those names up to the time when the catalogue was published. Not every family has updated resources available, but we are thankful for the ones we have!
Luckily for me, I was able to use recently published comprehensive catalogues of the new world species (Monné & Nearns, 2023), which made checking taxonomic names relatively easy. See a list of the catalogues we used in the project at the end of this post.
Since most of our longhorn beetle legacy collection had not been checked in many years, along with the immense amount of change in the taxonomy that happened over that time period, there was a lot of updating to be done. All told, some 500 names had to be updated. Once all the names were checked, the collection was reorganized.
Many generic and species names have undergone multiple changes over the course of the decades: misspellings, changes in spellings, synonymy of names, etc. As a result, searching the literature for the most updated name was challenging. But we prevailed!
Step 3: Cataloguing secondary type specimens
The Triplehorn collection is a research collection, and scientists use specimens in our holdings to study different groups of insects. During these studies, many new species have been discovered and described. The specimens used in the process of species description are designated as “types”.
Due to the long history of beetle research at OSU, and the thousands of loans of beetles to scientists around the world, we have a fair number of beetle types in the collection.
Paratype of Batyle knowltoni described by Knull.
Type specimens are critical for taxonomic research. They carry the name of the species and are considered a permanent reference for what the species looks like. For curatorial purposes, we want to know what types we hold, what species they are associated with, and where they are in the collection so we can quickly find them.
The primary types (aka holotypes) in the collection’s holdings have been segregated into dedicated type cabinets and drawers, catalogued (Musetti et al., 2019), and kept under lock and key for safety.
The much more numerous secondary types (paratypes, allotypes, etc.) in our holdings are kept with the general collection and, until recently, have never been catalogued. As part of the beetle curation project, we proposed to database all the beetle secondary types and made the data available via our online database.
Back to the cerambycids. After I reorganized the collection, I marked the drawers that contained type specimens “types” and later returned to those drawers to database them.
Step 4: Databasing the type specimens
For us, the term “databasing” encompasses the several steps involved with making sure specimen data is added to our online database and available to the public. The acquisition of that information is as critical as the physical curation of the specimens. The first major step is the transcription of the information written on each specimen label.
Reading and transcribing the handwriting of collectors and determiners, especially those described in the early 1900s, can be difficult. Historic cursive handwriting, including rather sloppy handwriting, is one issue. Another is that the information often contains nearly indecipherable abbreviations and sometimes is written on teeny, tiny labels.
Sometimes, specimen labels may have very little information, which diminishes their scientific value. We have some labels that say only “Central America” or “Brazil” or “USA”, in reference to where it was collected, and nothing else. That could mean anything!
In general, specimen labels will contain information about the collecting locality (country, state, county, town, etc.), the collecting date (date format varies greatly), the collector, and the method of collection (e.g., Malaise trap, yellow pan trap, or light trap). Specimens may also have determination labels, which at a minimum include a taxon name, and may include the name of the determiner (who determined the specimen as the taxon name we have in the collection), and the year of determination.
Regardless of the quality of the labels and the amount of information they contain, we persist.😊
The label data from each specimen is recorded as is – misspellings, typos, and all. The label information is then broken down into parcels of data. For example, collection locality information like “Ohio, Columbus, OSU campus” is added to the database as “Columbus, Ohio State University (OSU) campus, Franklin Co., OH” plus the exact coordinates for the museum. A similar process is followed for all the data elements in a label. As we transcribe label data, each specimen gets a barcode with a unique number that can allow for easy retrieval via our online database (primary type specimen of Atimia huachucae Champlain & Knull). Check out “Specimen Images” for a fun surprise!
Step 5: Determine if the type specimen is valid
To describe a new species, the author must publish the publication in a way that makes it accessible to the community. These days, this is usually in a scientific journal. According to the International Commission on Zoological Nomenclature, the official description must include the species name and the characteristics that distinguish the species.
The author must also designate a holotype and state where that specimen is deposited. If a species was described but not published – say, in a student’s thesis – the species would be considered a manuscript name. Usually, “MS” would be written on the determination label to establish the lack of official determination.
Unfortunately, it is not unusual that an identifier does not add “MS” to the identification label, and we, thinking it had been published somewhere, treat it as a valid name. Since there is no global official list of insect names, it can be very hard to figure out if a name is “real” or not.
Step 6: Find the literature
When the species name is determined to be valid and there is evidence that the species name is being used in catalogs or other research, then there should be a publication associated. Species types in our Cerambycidae collection range from being described in 1908 to 2011. In that time span, access to information can change dramatically depending on which year you are looking for.
Traditionally, finding publications in the archives of scientific journals was challenging. Today, though, resources like the Biodiversity Heritage Library and JSTOR are very valuable. Publications from about 1925 or earlier are publicly accessible. More recent publications that are not open access may be located behind a paywall. Ohio State’s Interlibrary Loan Services and Article Express interface make requesting an article extremely easy. Some publications are not available in an online format, but instead, only as a physical book or article. These can be borrowed and scanned into a digital format.
Step 7: Ensure specimen data matches publication
Rhopalophora sp. collected by the Knulls in the 1950’s.
Another aspect of searching for type literature is the task of ensuring the specimen housed in the Triplehorn or OSUC collection is actually a type that is cited in the publication. The things we look for are 1) does the label data described in the original publication match the specimen label, 2) does the publication state that types were deposited in the OSUC collection, and 3) do the number of male and female types listed in the publication match what is in the collection. None of these are definitive, though, and there are many examples throughout history where mistakes have been made. We do the best we can!
One complication is that there are several ways that an author might cite the OSUC collection as it has had many different formal and informal names through its lifetime (91 years!): the Triplehorn Insect Collection, collection of the Ohio State University, OSU collection, Entomological Collection of the Ohio State University, Knull Collection (former curator), Ohio State University Collection of Insects and Spiders, and OSUC.
In total, 64 type specimens from 15 species of Cerambycidae were databased.
Step 8: Print drawer and header labels
Every biogeographical region in one drawer! All of which are the same subfamily.
The final step in the process is printing header labels to be placed in each unit tray. Our header labels have the name of the species (or subspecies, genus, etc.) and are color-coded for each biogeographic region. Orange labels are for Nearctic specimens, yellow for Neotropical, black for Palearctic, brown for Afrotropical, green for Oriental (or Indo-Malayan), and blue for Australasian.
Then, we print drawer labels to be placed in the holders on the outside of the drawer. Drawer labels used in our collection contain family and subfamily information, and the list of genera housed in each drawer, so that we can quickly see what is included in that drawer when opening a cabinet. Finally, the label on the outside of the cabinet is updated to reflect its contents.
In total, I typed, printed, cut, and placed 1,428 header labels and 238 drawer labels into the curated cabinets of the Cerambycidae.
In summary, I truly loved curating the Cerambycidae – the amount of curatorial knowledge I gained was tremendous. The work the staff and students do every day in the Triplehorn Insect collection will be noticeable for years to come as we ensure the safety and accessibility of our specimens.
Literature References:
For the cerambycids of USA and Canada, I used Monné & Nearns (2023) Catalogue of the Cerambycidae (Coleoptera) of Canada and United States of America Parts 1-4. For the Neotropical specimens, Monné (2023) Catalogue of the Cerambycidae (Coleoptera) of the Neotropical Region Parts 1-3. We do have specimens from the other biogeographical regions, but they did not make up a large part of the collection. These names were checked using websites such as Catalogue of Life, Longhorn Beetles of the West Palearctic Region, or the Integrated Taxonomic Information System.
About the author: Jenna Helkey started working in the collection as an Undergraduate Student Assistant in 2022, and has never looked back. As she graduated from Ohio State University in 2024 with a Bachelor of Science in Biology, she continued her career at the Triplehorn Insect Collection. She enjoys long road trips across the U.S. and has been to 26 National Parks (and counting)!