Frost Curators' Blog

Musings and miscellanea from the Frost Entomological Museum

2019 sort session #1

As planned, the first Wednesday sort session yielded dozens of new specimens for the collection. I chose to sort through an old (2016) yellow pan trap sample from an ENT 432 field trip to Powdermill Nature Reserve. Here’s the locality, on the day the pan traps were out:

dorm made of wood and stone, nestled in the woods
Ravens Roost dorm in September 2016. Photo (CC BY 2.0) by Hillary Peterson. Click for original

The pans were in the woods, behind the photographer. I pulled out a variety of cool insects and spiders. Here’s one of the gems, a species we’ve collected consistently at Powdermill. Can you see it?

insects, mainly flies, in alcohol in a plastic dish
Insects collected in southwest Pennsylvania. Can you find the stalk-eyed fly (Diopsidae)? Sphyracephala sp. Photo by Andy Deans. Click for original

For this session I had three main goals:

  1. Feed my passion for arthropods and collections
  2. Grow our spider collection and learn spider taxonomy
  3. Set up a series of point-mounts to test a polyvinyl alcohol-based adhesive and its appropriateness for this purpose

The first goal was definitely met! That was an easy one though. More on goal #2 later, but I have a growing interest in spiders. I spent way too much time keying out three specimens: two linyphiids, keyed as the male and female of an Agyneta sp., and a pisaurid, Dolomedes. I don’t have a lot confidence yet in my abilities here.

Goal #3 will need more thought in the near future, but I am trying to follow-up on my recent review of the adhesives we use in entomology. The short version is that the adhesives entomologists typically employ in prep making—Elmer’s, shellac, and clear nail polish—have flaws that museum conservation experts consider fatal. Polyvinyl alcohol adhesives have recently found their way into the entomologist’s toolbox, but I can’t find very much about them in the museum literature. I think it’s time for a test.

I made a series of point mounts of different taxa, with different cuticular textures and hairiness, using Tombow 52180 MONO Aqua Liquid Glue. My first impression is WOW! This adhesive easily has the best working properties of any glue I’ve used to make point or card mounts. The tackiness and drying time are perfect. The finished mounts seem robust to physical disturbance as well, unlike the mounts I recently made with Paraloid B-72.

I’m a long way off from any rigorous test of point mount adhesives, but these sort sessions may just give me the inspiration and thinking time to design a robust experiment. Let me know if you want to work on this together!

New Year’s resolutions

I used to post an annual list of New Year’s resolutions for the collection when I was director of the NC State Insect Museum, complete with an assessment of how we did with last year’s resolutions. Not sure why I dropped this habit when I moved to Penn State, but I think it’s time to resurrect it in some form. Here goes …

Overall I think we’re doing pretty well at the Frost, at least in terms of maintaining good policies and procedures, digitizing the collection, and making upgrades to storage infrastructure. We’ve come a long way since 2012, when we started a big effort to modernize the Museum. That said, here are two things I want to work on in 2019:

Resolution 1 – Grow the collection

One activity where we are underperforming is collecting. Not just collecting but actually making proper specimens and accessioning them into the collection. I.e., we aren’t growing the collection at a sufficient rate. Here are the concrete steps I intend to take to make it happen for us this year:

  1. Collect regularly on my property. I live on >13.5 acres of woodland, which has yielded all kinds of crazy taxa, just from my haphazard collecting. Time to set up a transect of pitfalls, a Malaise trap, and regularly sampled pan traps.
  2. Establish a regular sort session. Wednesday afternoons (negotiable) are reserved exclusively for specimen sorting/prep’ing/curating. All are welcome!
  3. Coordinate with PDA entomologists to capture, sort, and prep specimens from residues that result from extensive sampling across the commonwealth.
  4. Take advantage of my state parks permit! The Entomological Society of Pennsylvania organizes these permits, but I had only one species to add to their list for 2018. Whipple Dam, Greenwood Furnace, Black Moshannon State Parks are some local favorites, and they are localities Stuart Frost frequently visited. More on that later.

Given the emerging reports on dramatic biodiversity declines — e.g., in Haiti, Puerto Rico, Canada, and Germany — it’s critical that we collect more data and specimens now.

wooden drawer filled with small cardboard trays. each tray has a foam bottom into which insect specimens are pinned. This drawer is about 80% full of weevil specimens
Room to grow! Most of our drawers now have 25% expansion room, and we’ve added an additional 500 or so empty drawers for expansion, all thanks to our NSF CSBR grant (DBI-1349356). Photo (CC BY 2.0) by Andy Deans. Click for source

Resolution 2 – Make progress on moving the Museum

This resolution is a bit more difficult to characterize and establish benchmarks for, but we need to relocate the collection and public space ASAP. The CAP assessment last June revealed serious deficiencies (none really surprising) in Headhouse III, a building that was not designed for natural history collections storage. The good news is that we appear to have our administration’s ear, and there is an active search for new space. The bad news is that we’ve put our re-opening on ice … indefinitely. Relocating a collection of this size is not a small undertaking — we could use your help! — and I still have a lot of lobbying to do. I’d like to see us make it into the next Penn State Capital Plan, maybe as a combined collections storage building? I think we all could use help!

New photos of insects hang from wires against the wall; there is a placard with information about the photographer, Matt Bertone
New exhibits at the Frost. Will they see a public audience soon? Photo (CC BY 2.0) by Andy Deans. Click for source

Of course I have many other goals for 2019, including one to post more frequent updates here on this blog. We do have some big news already, but I will save that for later this month or maybe February, when it’s finalized. If had to add one more resolution it’d be this:

Bonus resolution – Collect (or at least see) Atypus snetsingeri

Pennsylvania hosts the only species of Atypus, a group of purseweb spiders, in the New World. It happens to live only in greater Philadelphia. Hmmmm … (looking up and stroking my invisible goatee) Anyway, it’s an incredible species, named after the late Bob Snetsinger, a former arachnologist and jack-of-all-trades, who was on faculty in our department. We just digitized and recurated our collection of paratypes (below). Now I need to see this critter in real life! This species has had me obsessed with spiders for the last nine months. Seriously. SO COOL.

to glass jars filled with small glass vials and alcohol. each vial contains a spider specimens and some paper labels
Largest collection of Atypus snetsingeri in the world. These spiders apparently occur only in greater Philadelphia. How weird! Photo (CC BY 2.0) by Andy Deans. Click for source

HUB Robeson Center Exhibit

The Frost Entomological Museum was selected to exhibit some of the collection in ‘Eclectic Collections’ at the HUB Robeson Center on Penn State’s University Park Campus. Hopefully, we can draw Penn State students, staff, and visitors to our exhibit while it is up through January. Since our current museum space is open by appointment only, we felt this was an excellent opportunity to still showcase the insects in our collection!

Photograph of a display of some examples of extreme insects, on display at the HUB Robeson Gallery at Penn State
Image of the “Insect Superlatives” display at the HUB Gallery. Photo by Frost Entomological Museum at Penn State (CC BY 2.0). Click for source.

Our exhibit, titled Insect Superlatives, features extremes in entomology. The following is the information about the specimens in the exhibit:

Insect Superlatives, Curated by Emily L. Sandall, Frost Entomological Museum at Penn State

Comprising an estimated 6 million species, the insects are the most diverse group of animals on the planet1. Entomologists can study insect diversity using museum specimens to examine patterns in space, time, and appearance. Penn State is home to one of these collections, the Frost Entomological Museum, which houses insects collected in Pennsylvania and beyond over the last 150 years. Of all the diversity of the insects, here are some who represent extremes in entomology.

A. Most valuable | Honey bee | Apis mellifera Linnaeus, 1758
Pollinators, such as the honey bee, provide annual global food production services that value between $235 and $577 billion6. A number of factors, including climate change and insecticides have been linked to pollinator loss over the last decade.

B. Smallest | Parasitoid wasp | Dicopomorpha echmepterygis Mockford, 1997
This wasp would like dust on this paper triangle, at around 140 µm in length9; we show the photo of this microscopic wasp instead of an insect specimen. Parasitoid wasps lay their eggs in or on other insects and arthropod hosts to develop as larvae, emerge as adults, and repeat the process.

C. Largest mass | Goliath beetle | Goliathus goliatus (Drury, 1770)
At a maximum weight of around 100 grams, this beetle species, native to Africa, is considered to have the largest mass of the insects.

D. Largest wingspan | Atlas moth | Attacus atlas (Linnaeus, 1758)
The atlas moth has a wingspan of up to 27 cm and lives throughout Asia5. Only the caterpillar stage feeds; adult atlas moths live off of the energy stores of their youth.

E. Most painful sting | Tarantula hawk | Pepsis sp. Fabricius, 1804
The tarantula hawk is a wasp that stings its spider prey in order to use it as a host for its larva. Justin Schmidt, a Penn State alum who created a sting pain index described it as ‘instantaneous, electrifying, and totally debilitating’ for humans, warranting its second place ranking on his index8.

F. Most deadly | Malaria mosquito | Anopheles gambiae Giles, 1902
Female Anopheles can transmit the malaria parasite, causing an estimated 200 million cases of malaria each year between 91 countries2.

G. Longest migration | Wandering glider | Pantala flavescens (Fabricius, 1798)
The wandering glider, the longest-migrating insect, is a dragonfly that migrates an estimated 14,000-18,000 kilometers across the Indian Ocean3.

H. Fastest | Tiger beetle | Cicindela sexguttata Fabricius, 1775
Tiger beetles are among the fastest recorded insects, running at a speed of over 50 body lengths per second, 50x faster than the fastest human sprinters7.

 

1Stork, N. E. (2018). How many species of insects and other terrestrial arthropods are there on Earth?. Annual review of entomology, 63, 31-45,.
2World malaria report 2017. Geneva: World Health Organization; 2017. Licence: CC BY-NC-SA 3.0 IGO.
3Troast D, Suhling F, Jinguji H, Sahlén G, Ware J (2016) A Global Population Genetic Study of Pantala flavescens. PLOS ONE 11(3): e0148949.https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0148949
4Forbes, A. A., Bagley, R. K., Beer, M. A., Hippee, A. C., & Widmayer, H. A. (2018). Quantifying the unquantifiable: why Hymenoptera—not Coleoptera—is the most speciose animal order. bioRxiv, 274431.,
5Pavid, K. (2016). Spotlight: the atlas moth. The Natural History Museum. http://www.nhm.ac.uk/discover/spotlight-the-atlas-moth.html, 6Pollinators vital to our food supply under threat. Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations. http://www.fao.org/news/story/en/item/384726/icode/,
7Gilbert, C. (1997). Visual control of cursorial prey pursuit by tiger beetles (Cicindelidae). Journal of Comparative Physiology A, 181(3), 217-230.,
8Schmidt, J. O. 1990. Hymenoptera venoms: striving toward the ultimate defense against vertebrates, pp. 387-419. In D. L. Evans and J. O. Schmidt [Eds.], Insect defenses: adaptive mechanisms and strategies of prey and predators. State University of New York Press. 9Jerry E. Gahlhoff, Jr. (1998) University of Florida Book of Insect Records Smallest Adult Jerry E. Gahlhoff, Jr. Chapter 38 Smallest Adult. http://entnemdept.ufl.edu/walker/ufbir/chapters/chapter_38.shtml#mockford_1997

 

Point-mount disenchantment

Point mounts are my bread and butter. The wasps I study usually cannot be pinned—they’re too small—so we affix them to tiny triangles punched from archival card stock, skewered on a pin. The technique is pervasive, as the entomological collections community as a whole makes >400,000 such specimen preps annually. Check out this video from a collections master, Ed Riley of Texas A&M:

This is pretty much how I’ve done it, for 20 years. He uses Elmer’s Glue-All and clear nail polish, but, as hymenopterist tradition dictates, I preferred shellac or fish glue (Seccotine). Only recently have I started folding archival white glues (polyvinyl acetate or PVAc) into the process for certain insects.

A few weeks ago I wrote about how our use of these adhesives was questioned by a visiting museum conservation expert. The subsequent discussion inspired me to survey the entomology community for two main pieces of information: (1) What properties do we consider to be important for adhesives used in this context. Is there consensus? And (2) what adhesives do we use? With the results in hand, I dove into the polymer chemistry and museum conservation literature for information that would help me determine whether our chosen adhesives match our required properties.

A first draft of my review is now available:

Deans AR. (2018) A review of adhesives for entomotaxy. PeerJ Preprints 6: e27184v1 DOI: 10.7287/peerj.preprints.27184v1

As a community we pretty much agree on which adhesive properties are important, with the top three being: (1) archival, (2) reversible (many responded that this was equally important to “archival”), and (3) easy to use/prepare. We also appear to employ three main types of adhesives: (1) polyvinyl acetate (“white glue”), in various forms, (2) clear nail polish, and (3) shellac, with a few others types used less frequently.

My subsequent adhesive review, I have to admit, has thrown me into an existential crisis. All of our adhesives are critically flawed, and, if you trust the literature from other domains, we are generating hundreds of thousands of curatorial problems each year.

There are a lot of caveats, of course. The physics and chemistry at this small scale—a tiny dot of adhesive, securing cuticle to card—may be quite different from, say, coating the back of a canvas with a thick dollop of PVAc. And I certainly do not want to discount the vast experience of experts who have had to deal with point mounts and the real process of reversing them. We definitely need more rigorous research here, based on objective observations and data.

Given those caveats, however, I think I can comfortably make two solid recommendations:

  1. Stop using Elmer’s for point mounts! It is not archival, it doesn’t age well, it remains acidic, and the formula is proprietary and changes over time, sometimes radically. When I told a group of collections experts recently that most of my colleagues used Elmer’s for specimen mounts they audibly gasped and followed up with soft, awkward laughter and a lot of head shaking
  2. Stop using cellulose nitrate-based (“nitrocellulose”) clear nail polish for specimen repair and point mounts. Its aging properties are worse than Elmer’s, and these joints will ultimately fail (almost definitely within our lifetimes)

Other recommendations I am pretty sure will hold up upon further research:

  1. Stop using shellac for point mounts. Shellac bonds are very difficult to reverse, and the joints will become brittle with age
  2. Stop using PVAc (AYAF, AYAT, AYAC, Gelva, etc.) for these mounts. They age poorly, as poorly as Elmer’s, and will accumulate dust and debris over time

We’re doing more research, including some chemical analysis of other adhesives. Overall, though, I’d say I am disenchanted with this type of specimen prep. I might just move to minutens for some specimens or stick to ethanol. If you’re looking for an adhesive with proven long term archivability (but not easy reversibility) I’d look at this class:

  1. Poly(ethylene-vinyl acetate) (PEVA) coplymer, like Jade 403 or Evacon R.

They age well and are considered archival. Keep in mind, however, that these adhesives have a very short shelf life (six months) in the bottle. (This is true of any PVAc dispersion!) The set adhesive will also likely accumulate dust and debris over time and ultimately will be difficult to reverse. Another one worth experimenting with:

  1. Paraloid B-72 acrylic copolymer. It is a known archival material, with proven reversibility. You can buy it in prepared tubes or make your own, from beads dissolved in acetone or ethanol

We’ll have a lot more to say at the Entomological Collections Network meeting in November, including more on animal-derived adhesives (hide glue, etc.), Martha Stewart clear gel, gums, and others. Stay tuned!

2018 Entomological Collections Management Workshop in San Francisco, California

Last week, I attended the 2018 Entomological Collections Management Workshop, held at the California Academy of Sciences (CAS) in San Francisco, California. This was an intensive 4-day workshop run by the Entomological Collections Network (ECN) aimed at educating and training both current and future managers of insect collections.

Topics  included profiling and assessing collections, writing plans and mission statements, managing museum pests, packing & shipping specimens, supervising museum staff, digitizing and georeferencing specimens, and much, much more. We covered an impressive amount of material in four days, considering that we could have easily spent entire semesters on some of the topics. We were certainly not left lacking—each museum participant was sent home with a flash drive with hundreds of additional resources. I certainly have a lot more reading to do….

As part of the workshop, we learned how to package specimens for shipment. To test how well we did, we threw our boxes off of a three-story building. These specimens survived! Photo by Carolyn Trietsch (CC BY 2.0). Click for source.

Some of the greatest takeaways and pieces of advice from the workshop were as follows:

The Collection is everything

As David Furth put beautifully, “collections are the heart of a museum.”

Regardless of a collection’s size, scope or regional focus, all natural history collections are irreplaceable resources that are important on a local, national and international scale. Natural history collections can be used in many, many different ways; not only are they valuable for research and education, but also for environmental and conservation planning, resource management and allocation, and public policy and decision making.

Collection managers do it all

Collection managers are curators, supervisors, building managers, storytellers, exhibit designers, administrators, and more. To do these tasks effectively, they must know a little bit about everything. It’s easy to get caught up in different aspects of the job, but collection managers must never lose sight of the most important thing: the collection.

Collection management is a balancing act between preserving specimens and allowing them to be used and accessed for research or education. Collection managers have to know the needs of the collection as well as the needs of those using the collection, whether for research or other reasons.

As much as you want to please everyone, sometimes it is necessary to say no, whether it concerns accepting a donation of specimens that does not match the aims of your collection, or a request for destructive DNA extraction on specimens that cannot be replaced. Collection managers must strive to find the balance between protecting the collection and allowing it to be used.

The ethanol collection at the California Academy of Sciences. There are many things that collection managers must take into consideration when planning space for a collection such as this. Each shelf has a bar to prevent jars from falling off in the event of an earthquake, which is more likely in San Francisco than in State College, PA. The fire system in this room is also very sensitive (important for when your collection is highly flammable), and will fill the room with a dense fog at the first detection of smoke or heat. Photo by Carolyn Trietsch (CC BY 2.0). Click for source.

Know how your collection is used

It is important to track how your collection is used. Every bit of data you can collect will help you convince administrators that your collection is important and worthy of funding. Some of the things that can be recorded include: the number of resident researchers, students, and volunteers working with the collection; the number of visitors a year, and how many tours were given; the number of papers published using specimens from the collection; the number of loans and acquisitions; even the number of emails or phone calls you get expressing interest in the collection!

One handy tip from the workshop was to keep a counter handy at public outreach events so you can keep track of how many people you talk to and educate about the collection. Another handy tip was to keep a logbook available in the collection for visitors to write in. Any activity you track can help prove to others how useful collections are, and help prevent your collection from becoming orphaned in the future.

Learn about other collections at your institution

As part of the workshop, we toured collections of invertebrates, vertebrates, fossils, and plants, not just for the spectacle but because any entomology collection manager will be working with other collection managers, who may have different needs or concerns based on the specimens they have and the ways those specimens are preserved. Other collection managers may have goals that align with or contradict your own; it is important to understand how their collections operate and how their needs differ from yours so you can work to resolve any potential issues that arise, such as with space for the collection (“space wars”) or chemical safety (for example, some taxidermied vertebrates were preserved with arsenic and are dangerous to touch).

As part of the workshop, we toured several types of collections, including collections of fossils. Check out this saber-toothed tiger (Smiledon) fossil pulled from the La Brea Tar Pits. Photo by Carolyn Trietsch (CC BY 2.0). Click for source.

Know the ins and outs of designing exhibits

There are challenges associated with using specimens in exhibits. These include exposing specimens to damaging conditions such as light, temperature and humidity fluctuations, and the unavoidable hazard of small children touching and banging on the exhibits.

You should never subject research specimens to these conditions—instead, have a separate teaching or outreach collection you can take specimens from. Also, when designing an exhibit, decide what the aim of the exhibit is and make sure each component fits in with the overall theme. Each exhibit should tell a story to the visitors that they can walk away with and pass onto others.

Learn how to communicate with the public

Collection managers often serve as the public face of the museum. Collection managers are the ones who will be giving tours, participating in outreach, designing exhibits, interacting with traditional and social media outlets, and answering questions about the collection.

Think about what the public is interested in (have “oh my” stories or specimens ready; anything that makes people say “oh my”) and stay aware of current events—you will likely be asked about them. The public will likely ask questions about the collection and where the specimens came from; they may also ask questions about you and what your job is. Be patient and never say things that you know are wrong. If you’re asked a question you don’t know the answer to, tell them so, then look up the answer later and follow through with the person who asked it. They will respect that you were honest and took the time to follow through with them, and they will remember you for it.

Some examples of “Oh my” specimens at the California Academy of Sciences– mosaic gynandromorphs (containing both male and female wing characteristics) of Speyeria cybele eileenae. Photo by Carolyn Trietsch (CC BY 2.0). Click for source.

 

Though I have gained a lot of experience in imaging, digitizing and managing insect collections during my time at the Frost, the ECN collections management course helped me take this to the next level, gaining a broader view of the field and helping me to fill in the gaps in my knowledge. This course definitely helped me become a more capable and effective collection manager.

The workshop was held at the California Academy of Sciences (CAS) in San Francisco, California. The museum has a huge public space, complete with an indoor 3-story rain forest and an aquarium including a network of interconnected coral reefs! Photo by Carolyn Trietsch (CC BY 2.0). Click for source.

Department of Entomology, in the College of Agricultural Sciences, at Penn State

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