Values of Insect Collections

Clarence E. Mickel.

The pleasure and challenge of taking part in one vital scientific activity can be his who makes a collection of insects.

He starts for the fun of it, the joy in the endless variety of form, color, behavior, and universality of insects. Before long he wants to know the correct scientific names of the specimens he has and to expand his collection to include examples of other species. His interest grows with his collection and both may attain considerable size. Whatever his age and schooling he is a scientist then, one of a group whose work has great economic value to farmers and everybody else.

He will discover the basic value of a collection of correctly identified specimens that the correct scientific name of a species is the key to all published information about that species, its habits, and the damage or good it does. He will also discover that there is still a great deal to be learned about all insects and that his own careful observations are of value in adding to the store of knowledge about them.

His collection may be small, from twenty to several hundred specimens, with examples of the orders and principal families of insects. Or it may in time embrace thousands of specimens and be restricted to certain groups of insects, such as a family or a genus.

He may prefer to make what we call a general collection. His aim then is to accumulate representative specimens of the common insects in his own neighborhood so that he can enjoy their beauty of color and form or use them to learn to recognize the insects or simply to satisfy his instinct for collecting. The scope and size of his collection will depend on him and the breadth of his interest. He may limit himself to specimens he finds in his own back yard or he may include those of his town or county.

In any event, as he attempts to identify the specimens he has collected, he will discover much about the methods of science the need for proper mounting and preservation of specimens, lest parts of a specimen be damaged and lost and thereby make impossible its correct identification, the need for the minute examination of the specimen as it is being identified, the difference between learning for its own sake and learning with a practical application in mind (in this instance the control of harmful insects) , and the scientist's deep concern for orderly classification and naming.

He will do well to get all the stages of life of the insects he collects, particularly if his aim is to know all the pests of plants, animals, stored products or buildings around his home. Before long, he will gain information on where, when, and how insects live and the names of the orders and families of the specimens he has collected. Such details he will get from reference works, including the chapter "What Kind of Insect Is It?"

Anyone can make such collections. He must have some technical knowledge, but that he can acquire as his collection is made and grows. Mounting equipment and supplies, storage boxes for insects, and a few reference hooks will require some monetary outlay, but the amount will not be excessive. If he owns this Yearbook he will have many of the facts he wishes to know, but if he seriously expects to identify insect specimens he will require some additional technical works. Collecting insects is as inexpensive a hobby as anyone can have. His collection may or may not have scientific value, but it can have tremendous personal value to him: It teaches him a great deal about the insect world and about all living things. The chances are that anybody, boy or man or girl or woman, who makes a general collection gets an intense interest in insects that will last his lifetime and expand into other branches of natural science.

Another kind of collection is the one a biologist or entomologist may make on his own. Occasionally a person with training in biology becomes interested in the problems of the classification of a limited group of insects, such as a family or genus. He may do research on the classification of the group and, if he is not associated with some entomological research institute, he may have his personal collection of the group. Actually, some professional entomologists own private collections of the group of insects in which they are interested and on which they conduct taxonomic research.

They take more pains than beginners do with mounting and preserving specimens: Each specimen bears a label stating the locality where the specimen was collected, the date, the name of the collector, and any other biological information that can be printed on a small label. Each specimen also bears a second label giving the correct scientific name, the name of the scientist who made the identification, and the year the identification was made. The first or locality label is important no specimen has scientific value without it. The owners of such collections often are competent entomologists and their colleagues regard their work highly. The results of their researches are published in the professional journals. It follows, therefore, that private collections may be of great scientific value; in fact, they may be of as great scientific value as any professional collection in a museum or entomological research institute. The owners may describe new species and genera of insects and the specimens from which they make their descriptions become valuable as reference specimens.

When an entomologist, amateur or professional, publishes the results of his research in a professional journal, his description of a new species and the data regarding the specimens on which it is based become public property, but the specimens themselves are still in private hands. Often the publication is adequate for the identification of specimens collected thereafter, but sometimes an accurate identification cannot be made without reference to the original specimens. In such cases it may be necessary that an entomologist other than the original describer examine the specimens from which the description was made. It is vital then that the original specimens are properly taken care of and that they be available for examination by competent investigators.

Collections built up, financed, and taken care of by an individual should remain his property as long as he is engaged in research, of course, but collections of scientific value belong to the entomological research world as soon as their usefulness to the owner is finished. Many collections are given or sold to research institutions, where they are cared for and maintained for the use of all entomologists, but it has happened that fine collections have been so neglected that the specimens have become damaged or lost. One example is the collection of the famous American entomologist, Thomas Say, which upon his death in 1834 was lost or destroyed by pests one of the most valuable of all the early insect collections was lost because no provision was made for its care.

PROFESSIONAL INSECT COLLECTIONS are maintained by institutions for reference, research, and teaching.

The reference collection is systematically arranged so that any series of specimens representing a single species can be consulted to verify the identification of new specimens. The number of specimens in a series need not be large, although it should include specimens of both sexes, of the immature stages, and of the injury caused by the insect of economic importance. Because of the differences in methods of preservation, adult specimens often are maintained separately from immature specimens, and both may be maintained separately from the specimens of insect injury.

The scope of the reference collection depends on the institution sponsoring it. A city, county, or State institution may often elect to limit the collection to the insects found within its boundaries, but large museums and a few universities maintain reference collections that are almost world-wide in scope.

When a specimen is sent to the institution for identification, it can be compared with already named material by a specialist who is intimately familiar with the group, and a decision made as to whether it is the species it is thought to be. The name must be correct, because all published information regarding the insect is indexed under the scientific name; once that is available, all the known facts about the insect can be assembled in a short time, and, if the insect is doing or can do damage to crops or trees, men who are working to control it know with what sort of thing they have to deal. Thus an extensive reference collection is of inestimable value in the correct naming of new specimens and is indispensable to Federal and State agencies charged with the duty of research on the control of injurious insects.

Because hundreds of thousands of species have been described, a complete representative collection of all species would be next to impossible. No collection in the world includes representatives of all of the described species. Some important collections contain a few thousand, but some contain specimens of many thousands of species.

A considerable number of specimens submitted for identification can be routinely identified without difficulty. There still remain, however, thousands of undescribed species of insects, and many which have been so poorly described, or are so little known, that identification of specimens is of great technical difficulty. A research collection is necessary to study and solve such problems of classification, and it differs from a reference collection in the number of specimens of each species included the research collection having long series of specimens of a species whenever possible, while the reference collection will have only a few. Thus research collections often have a tremendous amount of unidentified material which, because of technical difficulties, can only be identified after much study and research. Obviously, extensive reference and research collections require the services of a specially trained curatorial staff, the larger collections requiring a correspondingly large staff.

The number and variety of species of insects make their systematic arrangement or classification a highly technical procedure. The scientific study of the similarities and differences among species of animals is known as taxonomy; the systematic arrangement of the species based on such studies is known as their classification. As new and undescribed species of insects are discovered and studied, the classification is bound to become more difficult and complex. The naming and identification of insect specimens consequently depends on how well the group has been studied and described. Some groups are well known and can be identified easily, but many are poorly known and their identification is difficult and laborious. There is a great need therefore for taxonomic research on them to facilitate their identification. The reserves of unidentified insect specimens in research collections provide a reservoir of material that can be drawn upon when opportunity offers for the intensive study of some insect group.