Frost Curators' Blog

Musings and miscellanea from the Frost Entomological Museum

2019 sort session #21 – gall city

This is gonna sound dumb, but my kids (ages 7 and 9) love to tease me about a magical place called “Kid City”, where children rule the land, every meal is dessert, and no grown-ups are allowed. This week I started referring to my yard, and really State College more generally, as “Gall City”, as I am finding numerous species for our newly-funded cynipid project. In Gall City, cecidologists rule the land, everything is botanically derived, and kids are encouraged to learn about plant-insect interactions. (Sadly, this has been my best counter so far to their taunts.)

This really is the right time of year to go gall hunting. The woolly catkin galls I collected a couple weeks ago are now yielding adults. I’ve also added dozens of galls of at least 6 or 7 other cynipid species to the rearing queue in our newly-christened Gall Room. More on that later, but it’s well past time to grow our tiny collection!

4 glass vials in a row, each about 3 or 4 inches tall and plugged with cotton at the opening. Each vial has fuzzy galls and dozens of tiny wasps walking around inside it
Glass vials with woolly catkin galls inside them. These galls yielded more than 100 individuals of the cynipid species Callirhytis quercusoperator. Photo (CC BY 2.0) by Andy Deans. Click for source

This week’s sort session focused on accessioning unprocessed galls and their causative insects. Many of the wasps above were prepared and accessioned as the first representatives of this species in the Frost Museum collection:

cardboard tray with plastozote bottom, filled with insect specimens and 4 galls
Finished specimens of Callirhytis quercusoperator ready to be accessioned. Photo (CC BY 2.0) by Andy Deans. Click for source

We also added galls collected a long time ago, like these Amphibolips acuminata galls I collected in New Jersey many months ago:

cardboard tray with plastozote bottom, filled with about 6 oak leaves, 3 twigs, and 4 galls that are shaped almost like American footballs
Spindle galls collected in New Jersey. Photo (CC BY 2.0) by Andy Deans. Click for source

Stay tuned for so much more on gall wasps! In the meantime I will very much enjoy my new life in Gall City.

2019 sort session #20 – labeling

I’m not gonna lie; labeling is maybe my least favorite step when preparing specimens. I do like typing them up (we usually do this in Word, as a table) and reminiscing about the collecting events I was a part of. Cutting the labels out as precise rectangles with minimal whitespace is also hugely satisfying, especially with our new paper slicer. Doing it right takes time, though, and the process usually means I don’t get to spend time admiring the insects themselves. This is also the step where we formally catalog and accession specimens, which requires that they get digitized. Data entry is not (usually) glamorous. That’s one reason we have several drawers of mounted insects that need labels.

During yesterday’s sort session I labeled and accessioned a backlog of 125 specimens, from four collecting events. The routine gave me time to meditate on label placement … among other things. We have an established labeling process already, but I find myself agonizing about it all the time. Here’s how we do it:

     o
     |
     |
   |\
 __ \)  ,
(__).o.@c    
    /|\ 
     |
[catalog #]
     |
[collecting event]
     |
[extra label]
     |
[determination]
     |
     |
     |

Our catalog number labels have a data matrix code, which could allow for rapid scanning of specimens without manipulating them. That’s the primary reason for putting them on first. It’s also the label we do not want disassociated from the specimen; putting it in the highest position makes it least likely to get removed. The problem is that its placement obscures the collecting event label, inhibiting a rapid scan by eye. šŸ™ There’s always a tradeoff. The extra label can be anything, from collecting event spillover, host plant information, data about specimen preparation, etc. The determination goes on last because it’s usually the last step.

I also added a new species to our collection: Sphyracephala brevicornis (Say, 1817) (Diptera: Diopsidae). We have specimens from Centre, Westmoreland, and Huntington counties. Here’s a photo of a specimen our own Michael Skvarla collected in 2006 in Indiana:

pinned fly with very wide head. the eyes are separated from each other in a way that makes the head look like a hammer from the dorsal perspective
Stalk-eyed fly. Collected in Lafayette, Indiana, USA October 2, 2006. Photo (c) by Michael Skvarla. Click for source

Killer spider at the Frost! And other observations from 2019 sort session #8

tiny beetle, about 2 mm long, glued to a pointy piece of card stock that is skewered on a pin
Chramesus hicoriae LeConte, 1868 collected during surveys by the Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture. Photo (CC BY 2.0) by Andy Deans. Click for source

Finally a Wednesday without a snow/ice storm! Sort session #8 was dedicated to dealing with the huge volume of specimens from old (2014) Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture surveys. I’ve mounted about 200 specimensā€”in Hymenoptera, Hemiptera, and Coleopteraā€”and have been pleasantly surprised by the diversity. I’m sure we’ve added new taxa to the collection and definitely new occurrence data. The bark beetle specimen above isĀ Chramesus hicoriae LeConte, 1868, a species known to feed on hickories. It is definitely the cutest insect I came across yesterday (or ever?), although that probably doesn’t come across in this crummy smart phone photo. It was so tiny!

I also spent a few minutes with a tarantula our volunteer, Justin, recently encountered while cataloging and digitizing our spiders. It’s in relatively poor shape:

a tarantula specimen sits in a Petri dish, completely de-articulated, almost unrecognizable as a spider. Its condition is the result of poor storage conditions
Tarantula specimen in our digitization rig. Photo (CC BY 2.0) by Andy Deans. Click for source

But check out that data label. E P I C.

small paper label that reads, in part,
Label that accompanies that poorly preserved tarantula above. Photo (CC BY 2.0) by Andy Deans. Click for source

Here is my best transcription:

Tarantula from Lurifico Peru. Said to have caused the death of 4 men. Brought on board alive after 6 mos. captivity {Mst?} Jones Pacasmayo Oct. 6 / 84

Ha ha ha. Wow. Well, I am highly skeptical that this spider caused the death of four men, but that is a great story. I love sort sessions precisely for this reason – opportunities to examine and learn about many taxa, to add our own high quality specimens and data, to dig deep into our historic collection, and to unearth compellingā€”if unbelievableā€”stories. What’ll happen next week!

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 reservedĀ exclusivelyĀ 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,Ā 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,Ā 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

Frost data now available!

It’s been awhile since I provided any substantial update. We’ve been working quietly behind the scenes to address issues discovered during our CAP assessment, and we’ve made substantial progress in digitizing specimens in our collection. That last bit is especially important as our TCN grant is in its final year. To that end, I am proud to announce that our data, or at least a substantial portion of it, are available through the Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF).

figure illustrating where our specimens come from; unsurprisingly most are from Pennsylvania and the northeastern USA
Map illustrating where our specimens have been collected. Visit GBIF for the latest map and all the data that underly it.

That map, which was generated from data associated with just over 78,000 specimens (only 8% of which were georeferenced at the time), uploaded four weeks ago, is already out of date. We now have >122,000 specimens digitized (transcriptions from specimens), >20% of which are georeferenced, in our SCAN repository. We have another 50,000 specimens and lots digitized in TaxonWorks; these records are derived from transcriptions of images and are not yet available in SCAN or GBIF. With help from a new volunteer at the Frost I am hoping to expand our presence in the digital substantially by next summer. More on that later!

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

Visit our Frost Museum facility website for more information

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