Check out part 1 to see where Emily Sandall was this summer.
Studying tiny wasps has brought me to some interesting places, from the Pine Barrens of New Jersey to the Sonoran Desert in Arizona. This summer, my studies brought me to Europe, where I had the incredible opportunity to visit some of the most famous natural history collections in the world and image type specimens.
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Type specimens are the specimens used to describe a new species. The most important one the holotype, which is the single specimen that is chosen to represent a species. The holotype is then deposited in a museum so that others can study it and use it to confirm species identifications.
Often the only way to study a holotype specimen is by visiting the museum it’s deposited in, but as part of our work on Ceraphronoidea, the Deans lab is imaging type specimens and publishing photographic catalogs. These catalogues will serve as reference materials to facilitate future research.
My first visit was to the Natural History Museum in London, UK (NHMUK). The NHMUK has an extensive Hymenoptera collection, which includes one of the largest known collections of Ceraphronoidea type specimens. It was an incredible experience to be able to look at the original specimens from J. J. Kieffer, who worked on Ceraphronoidea over 100 years ago.
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While visiting the NHMUK, I had the opportunity to go behind the scenes and see what is possibly the oldest insect collection in the world, which consists of specimens collected and prepared by Leonard Plukenet (1642 – 1706). Plukenet was a botanist and preserved insect specimens in the same way as he preserved his plant specimens—pressed between the pages of a book. While the specimens are rather squashed (especially the Bombus specimens), some specimens are in surprisingly good shape, such as the butterflies and crane flies. Not bad for specimens over 400 years old!
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After finishing up in London, I traveled to Paris, France, to visit the Muséum national d’Histoire Naturelle (MNHN). Here, I was able to study and image several specimens and microscope preparations from Paul Dessart, who did the bulk of the work on Ceraphronoidea until his death in 2001. He dissected specimens and mounted them on slides, but the portions he did not mount were stored in ethanol. We could not find the ethanol specimens and were afraid that they had been lost, but on the last day, two hours before the museum closed, we finally found them. It was a hectic way to end the trip, but I had enough time to image each specimen.
Overall, I had an incredible trip! Look for more blog posts about my work at each museum and my upcoming visit to the Smithsonian, as well as more posts from the other members of the Deans lab about our travels over the summer.
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