You know those odd chunks of time you get, 45 minutes between zoom calls, for example, or the 30 minutes one has before getting kids at school? I now cherish those moments, as they’re just right for making improvements to course materials. Specifically, I am trying to upgrade my Insect Biodiversity and Evolution lab handouts. It’s been a long, slow transformation, with two main aims: (1) make them a bit more generic (i.e., less Pennsylvania-focused), and (2) to convert all the micrographs to line drawings. Take this incredible confocal laser scanning micrograph of a dipluran antenna:

It beautifully illustrates the musculature one can see in each dipluran antennal segment. That is, you can see one of the major traits that differs between insect and non-insect hexapods. But, oh man, does it ever burn through a ton of toner when we print it. It also doesn’t render well on the printed page, unless we go full color. What about this Imms classic, though (Fig. 3 in Imms 1939):

The line drawing effectively illustrates the same trait, in a simpler, more toner-friendly way. I’m bullish on line drawings again, and, thanks to the efforts of the Biodiversity Heritage Library (BHL) and their partners, there are MANY of public domain line drawings available. You can find them in Flickr, where there are also links to the sources. Cruising the BHL’s photostream in my spare moments has been a fun hobby, one that undoubtedly will make my handouts better.

That said, I find myself frustrated that I cannot find the ideal line drawing for each of the taxa or characters I’m covering. The solution, of course, is to simply do them myself (I was a line illustrator once!), but with my schedule it’ll take a long time to complete that task. Maybe we should crowd-source these drawings. I.e., establish some sort of clearinghouse for creative commons or public domain line drawings. Something like University of Texas / Alex Wild’s Insects Unlocked (also on Flickr! Learn more on YouTube), where students could learn how to do line drawings and then share their creations.

We also need fresh interpretations of important characters and taxa. There’s a long history of resource-strapped entomologists reproducing each other’s drawings. Check out this drawing of a hydroptilid caddisfly by Needham, from 1902, for example:

And this line drawing of a hydroptilid caddisfly from Ward and Whipple (1918):

Clearly that is the same line drawing. In cruising through the BHL’s photostream it becomes quite clear that we have been reproducing the same handful of line drawings of insects ad nauseum. You can even see it above, in the dipluran antenna example (Imms drawing, reproduced by Ewing). Some of these original illustrations have been reproduced five or more times, and my own re-use of these illustrations isn’t improving the situation.

We need some fresh illustrations!