Sort session #5 kicked off with a nice surprise from the Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture:

One of our New Years resolutions was to grow the collection, in part by fostering a tighter connection with the PDA and to tap into their vast wealth of trap residues. It’s barely February, and this effort is already bearing fruit!

We received more than 1,200 vials like the one above, each filled with a smattering of Hymenoptera, Coleoptera, and Hemiptera – the taxa we are targeting initially. Yesterday I managed to mount about 5% of this new acquisition. Next step: databasing and labeling. No small task! This will probably be the focus of many of the next sort sessions.

In other HUGE news, a new member of the Frost Museum team starts today … our new assistant curator! More on that in another post. SO EXCITING. Needless to say, this is a game changer for our museum.