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COLLECTING INSECTS
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COLLECTING INSECTS
COLLECTING INSECTS
Many insects, such as beetles, grasshoppers, and flower bugs, are simply collected by hand and thrown into the stain. You need to bring an open jar from below to a bumblebee or a bee sitting on a flower and push the insect into it with the stopper. They are well protected from enemies by their sting, are not as shy as flies or butterflies, and do not fly away when you bring a jar to them. Butterflies, flies, and dragonflies are caught with a net. It is very difficult to catch an insect in flight and you need to watch for it when it lands. You should carefully bring the net to a butterfly sitting on a flower, approaching it so that the shadow does not frighten the insect. Then you need to make a quick movement with the net, then the butterfly will be in the depths of the net, and turn the net so that its hole closes.
After this, having found through the mesh where the insect is sitting, they take it with two fingers of their left hand, holding it in the fabric, open the net, bring the open jar with their right hand and stick the insect into it.
Insects have to be euthanized for collection. To do this, use chloroform or sulfuric ether, which is dripped onto cotton wool in a jar. The jar is filled with poisonous vapors, which euthanize insects: butterflies after 2 - 3 hours, beetles after 5 -6 hours; only half an hour is enough for flies. Even though ether is the most convenient sedative, it is best to avoid it.
The jar where insects are collected should contain many narrow strips of blotting paper or newsprint, crumpled into a loose lump.
Other means of pickling are not as convenient, but safer. Take sulfur (in sticks, pieces or powder), melt it in a flat tin and soak blotting paper in the melted sulfur. After this, dry the paper and cut it into pieces. When preparing the stain before going on a trip, pin one such piece to the cork of the jar from the inside with a pin, set fire to the piece of paper and let it burn in the closed jar where the insect is located.
You can also kill insects with boiling water. Having brought home insects in a jar alive, you need to heat water in a can and, when it boils, pour the insects into it. They will be killed instantly. Insects are dried on newspaper or absorbent cotton wool. Wetting does not harm even butterflies.
Collections can be immediately prepared from collected and euthanized insects. If you postpone this work for another time, then transfer all the insects from the stain to cotton wool for temporary preservation. This installation is done on layered cotton wool, cut into mattresses according to the size of the box.
Rice. 7. Temporary storage of insects on cotton pads, recording the place and time of collection.
Rice. 8. How to straighten and how to prick insects of different orders.
Under the mattress, as shown in the picture. 7, place a strip of paper the same width as a layer of cotton wool, but longer than it. Using the ends of this strip, it is easy to remove the cotton wool with insects from the box, and when the cotton wool is placed in the box, the ends of the paper are wrapped on the cotton wool at both ends and cover the insects.
Since collections, especially if they are made in little-studied places, can have scientific significance, it is useful to attach to the collections a record of where, when and by whom the insects were caught. To do this, place a sheet of writing paper of the same size on the layer with insects, where all the necessary information is indicated. If not the entire mattress is occupied by a separate collection, but only part of it, then this part is separated with a piece of black or colored thread placed on cotton wool, and a line should be drawn on the covering sheet with a pencil, corresponding to the thread. Then each entry is made only for a certain part (Fig. 7).
Rice. 9. Butterfly: straightened correctly - upper - and incorrectly - lower, crossed out.
If the box is deep enough, then layer upon layer is placed in it, as much as will fit. The cotton wool is compressed, but this does not harm the integrity of the insects. It is useful to immediately straighten euthanized insects while they are still fresh and soft, regardless of whether they are now going into the collection or are left for now on cotton wool as material.
On the image. Figure 8 shows what appearance the straightened insects should have across all the main orders of this class of animals. In the same figure, there is a dot on each insect where a pin should be stuck when a collection of pins is compiled.
Please note that the legs of insects with folded wings are straightened so that the first pair is directed forward, the second and third are directed back. Particular attention should be paid to the spread of the wings. This is shown in the picture. 9. The lower figure of the butterfly is crossed out, which means: the wings are spread incorrectly; and above is a sample of a correctly straightened butterfly. The work of straightening the butterfly is shown in the figure. 10.
Having pierced the butterfly with an entomological pin, secure it in a straightened position so that the back of the insect lies flush with the banks of the groove.
If you are not working with a real straightening, but with a simple board on which a groove is made, then put the butterfly into the groove and hold it with the little finger of your left hand.
Now take the dissecting needle in your right hand. Pin the end of one strip of paper above the wings near the butterfly's head. Look carefully at the drawing. 10 and straighten it as shown. Carefully move the upper right wing with a needle to the butterfly's head and further until its lower edge becomes as in figure 2. Pull the strip with your left hand so that it presses the upper edge of this upper wing, but does not overlap the lower wing. Pull up, as in figure 3, the lower wing after the upper one until it is in position, as in figure 4. Then pin the lower end of the strip. The spreading of the right wings is over. Using the same techniques as shown in figures 5, 6, 7, spread your left wings. Press the edges of the wings with the second strips of paper, as in figure 8 of the figure. 10.
We can straighten butterflies and other insects without any special straightening if we make collections not on pins, but on cotton wool. You just need to have small pieces of glass the size of a postage stamp. The butterfly is placed on a board covered with a thin, even layer of absorbent cotton wool, and, spreading its wings (sequentially, as in Figure 11), each wing is covered with a tiny piece of glass. The board with insects and pieces of glass should be very carefully transferred somewhere to a closet or shelf, where it should be left in this position for a week.
On a board or cardboard covered with a thin layer of cotton wool, you can straighten many insects in a crawling position by placing the insect on the cotton wool with its back up and spreading its legs: the first pair forward, the remaining two pairs back (according to Fig. 8). The legs are moved to the desired position with a needle, and they, catching the claw of the paw on the cotton wool, dry up. While drying, the insect should be pressed against the cotton wool with a piece of glass. (Fig. 11, figs. 4, 5, 6.)
Rice. 10. Sequence of work to straighten the butterfly.
Rice. 11. Straightening insects on temporary spreading:
1 - on a matchbox; 2 - on a large cork with a groove; 3 - on a piece of cork; 4, 5, 6 - on a board with a cotton layer.
The same figure (11) shows how to dry a butterfly in a sitting position (Fig. 3) and how to make other straightenings.
When insects are collected en masse, sometimes there is no time or conditions for their rapid dispersal. Then place your collections as they are on cotton pads and store them in boxes.
You need to know that you can soak all kinds of old, sometimes many years old, collections of unsorted insects on cotton wool and they will become soft, as if they were fresh.
Place a layer of sand on a deep plate, or in a small wide rinsing cup, or in a bath and soak it thoroughly with water. A piece of soaked paper is placed on this sand, dry insects are placed on it and covered with a piece of window glass or a board. After two days, the insects in such a damp chamber will become damp and can be straightened out. You can also soak it on a saucer with wet sand, creating a damp chamber under an overturned glass.
Collecting other animals or their parts does not require knowledge of any special techniques.
A variety of dry material from the collections - mollusk shells, bird feathers, the horny skin of a snake shed during molting, scales of large fish, ram horn, washed and dried bones of edible fish or poultry left over from the dinner table - are simply placed in a box. Some of this - wings and legs cut off from dead birds, a dead bat, cut off fins of a very large fish and more - must first be straightened, dried and only then placed in a box for storage.
