The U.S. National Entomological Collection ranks as the second largest insect collection in the world with approximately 35 million specimens including over 100,000 holotypes plus hundreds of thousands of additional paratypes and other secondary types.
The collection includes over 300,000 species representing approximately 60% of known insect families. With specimens from locations worldwide, the collections are second to none in coverage for the Nearctic and Neotropical regions. Specimens from the Old World are also well represented, especially from Sri Lanka, the Philippines, and Papua New Guinea. Particular strengths include mosquitoes, wasps, beetles, butterflies and moths, and flies. Although the bulk of the collection is kept dry, various groups—such as spiders—are stored in alcohol.
The collections are typically arranged by taxon; lower centipedecategories(genus,species) are arranged alphabetically,and for select taxa, they are further organized by country of origin within each species. While the majority of the collection is housed at the National Museum of Natural History in Washington DC, some groups are held at other research facilities in nearby Maryland, including the USDA’s Beltsville Agricutural Research Center and the Smithsonian Institution’s Museum Support Center. The U.S. National Tick Collection was moved in1990 to the Institute of Arthropodology and Parasitology at Georgia Southern University on a long-term enhancement loan.
The Lyman Entomological Museum:
The Lyman Entomological Museum is the insect collection and systematic entomology laboratory of McGill University. The collection houses 2.8 million specimens of insects and other arthropods, making it the second largest insect collection in Canada, and the largest university insect collection in the country.
Louisiana State Arthropod Museum:
The Louisiana State Arthropod Museum (LSAM) houses the largest collection of insects in the state. It is part of the Department of Entomology and is a component collection of the Louisiana Museum of Natural History. The LSAM contains approximately 500,000 specimens of insects and related arthropods. This includes 280,000 pinned, 18,000 fluid-preserved, and 30,000 slide-mounted specimens. Uncurated specimens in various stages of processing vary through time from 50,000 to 100,000. The LSAM is the principal repository for insects and related arthropods in Louisiana. Significant strengths of the collection include Coleoptera (51%) and Hemiptera (28%). Lepidoptera (6%), Diptera (6%) and Hymenoptera (4%), and other orders (5%) make up the balance of the collection. The collection contains 747 paratypes, 1 syntype, 1 allotype, and 1 holotype. Primary types described by LSAM researchers are normally deposited in dedicated type repositories (e.g., the U. S. National Museum, Field Museum of Natural History, etc.). The majority of specimens are from southeastern United States, and most of the remainder are from elsewhere in North America, Mexico, Central and South America. Recent expeditions have added specimens, mainly Coleoptera from West Africa (Ghana) and New Zealand.
The Melbourne Museum:
The Entomology Collection comprises a great diversity of terrestrial and freshwater insects. Primarily focused on the fauna of Victoria and south-eastern Australia, it also contains material from around Australia and the rest of the world. One of Museum Victoria’s largest collections, estimated at 2.5–3.0 million specimens, with more than 190 000 registered specimens, the collection is locally, nationally and internationally significant. It consists of both wet (preserved in 70% ethanol) and dry (pinned) specimens. They cover all major insect groups found in Australia, including butterflies and moths, beetles, grasshopper, ants, bees, true bugs, caddisflies (and other aquatic insects) and cockroaches.
Antennae Magazine:
Insect Poetics is a two-part collection of essays from Antennae Magazine. The issues are available in PDF format from their website. The book of the same name is also worth picking up.
From the Editor:
The third issue of Antennae is greatly different from its summer predecessor. As you remember, our previous issue took a marked environmentalist turn focusing on the problem of plastic bags. As explained at the time, Antennae did not want to abandon its animal-focus but aimed at broadening its scope in the belief that environmental issues will soon become common denominator to a number of disciplines involved in the study of human-animal studies.
Our third issue maintains this premise and is completely dedicated to insects. The inspiration for the theme came from ‘Insect Poetics’, the book edited by Eric Brown which in eighteen original essays, wonderfully presents a range of ways in which our human, intellectual, and cultural models have been influenced by the presence of insects. Back in May, Antennae contacted Eric Brown asking for an interview. The idea of a themed issue of Antennae titled after the book came from a consistent exchange of emails that took place over summer. We selected the work of a number of writers featured in the book and proposed them to write extensions to their essays. Each was asked to develop a thread of their choice.
The result is not one issue of Antennae but two. Our fall issue is divided into two volumes: the one you are now reading and a second one that will be available on the 1st of November.
This does not necessary mean that we will increase the frequency of our publication just yet, but we thought that this experiment could be particularly interesting, and yes, we do have a serious soft spot for insects. In our best ‘tradition’ we are still bringing to the surface challenging and thought provoking works by artists engaging with the natural field. Take a look at the work of Tessa Farmer, our cover story, and let us know what you think. She is one of the most original contemporary artists around and her work is gaining popularity in Europe – you literally won’t believe your eyes.
In a slightly more political turn we question the contemporary exhibiting trend that sees the old-fashioned entomology cabinets disappearing from Natural History Museums around the world and asked a number of leading entomologists to express their views on the subject.
The second volume of issue 3 will include among others an interview with Catherine Chalmers; the macro photography of beetles by Poul Beckmann (author of the photographic books Jewels 1 and 2) and some insect
recipes inspired by ‘Why Not Eat Insects?’ -Vincent M. Holt.
Walking out my apartment’s door and towards my car to drive to work yesterday, I discovered a paper wasp building a nest. I turned around and grabbed a plastic vial from my new specimen collecting bag and gently and with surprising ease, scooped up the wasp and small nest into it. I placed the confused insect and its nest into the freezer until I could look at it closer after work.
Here are a few photos I took yesterday evening:
Paper Wasp (polistes stigma)
Paper Wasp nest
Paper Wasp close-up [1]
Paper Wasp close-up [2]
According to National Audubon Society’s Field Guide to Insects and Spiders, the paper wasp is docile compared to her cousins, the hornet and yellowjacket. A lone female usually starts to build a nest made by chewing plants until it forms a paper-like consistancy. Other Paper Wasps help out with the spawning and feeding of the brood. These worker’s wages are not the best: the lone female ends up killing them in the end.
They say the sting of this wasp is very painful. “They” is Justin O. Schmidt, the creator of the Schmidt Sting Pain Index, and I tend to believe what he says. His scale starts at zero, which is defined as an insect stings that are “completely ineffective” towards us humans, up to four, the most painful of stings. How did he do it? A very simple but painful process: he had an insect sting him and he jotted down his description of the sting. I know you’re curious so here it is: the most painful sting he received was from paraponera clavata, the bullet ant (4.0+). Schmid wrote:
Paraponera clavata stings induced immediate, excruciating pain and numbness to pencil-point pressure, as well as trembling in the form of a totally uncontrollable urge to shake the affected part.
What would you expect from an insect that was named because being bitten by one is like being shot? I’m glad to read that paper wasps rarely sting unless protecting their nest. Schmidt rated the paper wasp’s sting at a 3.0:
Caustic & burning. Distinctly bitter aftertaste. Like spilling a beaker of hydrochloric acid on a paper cut.
I must have caught this one napping on the job since it was very easy to capture while it hung motionless onto its small nest-in-progress. I would have liked to have just left the wasp be, continuing to build its nest and I could monitor it over time, but I doubt it would have lasted long since the wasp made the unfortunate mistake of building its nest right above my neighbor’s door. If he did not destroy it, the grounds keeper most definitely would have. Their sting causes a potentially fatal allergic reaction, an average of three deaths a year in the US, in fact. As much noise as some of my neighbors make at night, I wouldn’t want to see that happen to them!
Like most boys, I loved catching bugs when I was a kid. Spending time growing up in Oregon, Minnesota, and California, I’ve probably seen my fair share of creepy crawlies. I always have my camera handy nowadays to take a portrait of an insect when I’m outdoors and last weekend was no exception. I spent an extended weekend in the Bay Area with my family (including my beautiful 6-month old niece) celebrating Easter together. On Easter Sunday, we headed up Niles Canyon to Sunol, California - the epitome of a sleepy town. In fact, I think we doubled the population when our party of six arrived. Sleepy? More like unconscious.
But what better way to spend a beautiful Sunday than outdoors with your family in a town surrounded by rolling green hills abloom with wildflowers? Here are a handful of photos I took:
California Poppies
Willow Mining Bee on California Poppy
Soldier Beetle on Plant
I was on a plane back to Southern California just four hours after these photos were taken. When I arrived home, there was a package waiting for me on my doorstep. It was a book I have been anxiously awaiting, and it couldn’t have come at a better time. Because I like old things, especially books, I searched for and found an old copy of a insect field guide online. And now, a month later, I was holding a 1921 copy of Lutz’s Fieldbook of Insects. It was first published in 1918 but started to fade from history after its last printing in 1948, five years after it’s namesake - Frank Eugene Lutz - passed away. But Lutz and his book were not the main reasons I was excited to receive this book. It was the name written in the front of the book, most likely the name of a previous owner: Walter J Breckenridge.
This man has not faded from history. Known as “Breck” to those who knew him, Breckenridge spent most of his life promoting nature in one form or another. In the 1950’s and ’60s, he produced feature-length nature films and presented them across the Midwest to auditoriums filled with children and adults. He is a published author of wildlife books and an artist, adding images of fauna to his books as well as others. You could catch Breck answering questions and sharing stories at the Bell Museum on the campus of the University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, where he served as the director for twenty-four years. From a Bell Museum publication:
Breck’s influence is still much in evidence at the Bell, where dioramas he constructed even 60 years ago continue to draw museum goers. But his impact extends well beyond the University campus. In Minnesota, Breck’s scientific work and advocacy led to the creation of the state Scientific and Natural Areas Program and to the establishment of parks, wetlands, and wildlife areas including Nerstrand Woods State Park, the Spring Brook Nature Center, and the University’s own Cedar Creek Natural History Area. His encyclopaedic knowledge of winged, scaled, and four-legged creatures, his unceasing fascination with them, and his artistic talent helped create and illustrate definitive reference works on birds and reptiles as well as evocative oils and watercolors that captured the character and habits of osprey, prairie falcons, Canadian geese, and many other birds with astonishing acuity.
Dr. Walter J Breckenridge lived a long life, passing away just a few months after his one-hundredth birthday.
Fieldbook of Insects, Frank E. Lutz (1921)
“WJ Breckenridge”
I was hoping that there would be some marginalia within the pages of the book. Some reminder that one of Minnesota’s leading ornithologists used the book on his trips in a meadow. Maybe a passage about an butterfly he spotted or notes on identifying a beetle he found underneath a dead log, but it is clean for the most part. There are a few small sketches here and there, quite possibly by Breck, but nevertheless, this book is a treasure and will be a proud addition to my antique guidebook collection.
I read on Engadget not too long ago about how someone had the bright idea on combining a webcam with a microscope to make a digital microscope. I found some time this weekend to try it out. I used a Logitech Quickcam and a 1934 Spencer Microscope. The microscope was a gift for my tenth birthday and introduced me to the world of the invisible scale. Until earlier this week, it has been in storage for over a decade. I’m happy to see it again to try to combine my childhood joy of microscopy with my adult joy of photography - a study called photomicrography.
Photomicrography is what it sounds like - photographing images under a microscope. The following images were taken by placing the lens of the webcam directly onto the eye piece. As you can see, the poor old microscope is in desperate need of cleaning and calibration, but I’m happy with these initial results. The slides that my parents gave to me have been with the microscope since my childhood. Ironically, the slide to the left is called “Worker Bee Wing, Japan“. My last post, which specifically discussed the Japanese Honey Bee and its war against the Giant Hornet, was written while this slide and my microscope was all still in storage! The slide on the right is of the “Honeybee Compound Eye, Japan” slide.
After experimenting with photomicrography, I adjusted the focal length of the webcam, allowing me to bypass the microscope and explore objects on my desk from the perspective of an insect. The images below are of the Giant Wasp (left) and the Japanese Honey Bee (right), shown at a much wider angle in my last post.
Here’s a couple pics of another dead insect I have on my desk: Odontolabis Elegans, or the Thai Stage Beetle. You’d think that a cheap web cam couldn’t ever compete with the power of a SLR like my Canon 40d. In many ways, it can’t - but I’m a little shocked by the detail the webcam captures compared to equipment costing fifteen times as much! Check out these macro abilities and let me know what you think in the comments section.
When I was a kid, I had a fascination with bees. I’m sure this fascination covered all bugs and critters, but I do remember having spent hours with my nose buried in a flowering plant watching the bees fly from flower to flower. In 6th grade, I entered my school’s annual science fair with a diorama on honeybees. I even used a plastic ice tea cooler with a floral design painted on it to house a few bees and some branches. I don’t remember why but I wasn’t around for the announcement of the prizes. When I returned to my display, I found a blue “First Place” ribbon stuck to my project… despite the fact that all of the bees had died.
You might have noticed that I’ve been taking a lot of photos of Honey Bees recently, but it was an old copy of The Dancing Bees, by that has taken the world of bees into a whole new level for me. Now when I photograph bees, I am understanding more of what they are doing and how they are helping the plant and the bee colony. The information on how bees communicate with each other where nectar has been discovered is fascinating. von Frisch was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1973 for his discovery of this “dance” done in the hive.
Speaking of bees, I recently purchased two insect specimens encased in Lucite: the Asian Honey Bee (Apis cerana) and the Asian Giant Hornet (Vespa Mandarinia).
The Asian Honey Bee is a little smaller than our Western equivalent (Apis mellifera), but most would agree that the Asian Giant Hornet was properly named. This bug is a monster! It can reach lengths up to 2 inches (50 mm), making it the world’s largest hornet. It’s stinger can cause tissue damage and even death to humans without immediate treatment. But we have it easy compared to the European Honey Bee. The hornet’s main source of food is the honey bee’s larvae. They viciously attack and destroy entire European Honey Bee colonies in a day. A single hornet can kill up to 40 Honey Bees per minute, usually killing them by tearing off their heads with their powerful mandibles. The aftermath of a battle between just a few of these hornets and a colony of bees is hard to fathom. A 30,000-member colony can be wiped out by just a small gang of the Asian Giant Hornet in just a few hours.
Here’s a video of an attack:
But the Japanese Honey Bees have a secret weapon. Heat! Check it out:
