Comments on: Labels tell stories: natural history and ecology from dead spiders in vials

By: Natural history museums are essential for science | The Lab and Field

Natural history museums are essential for science | The Lab and Field — Sat, 29 Jun 2013 14:44:28 +0000

[…] Contact an appropriate museum, ask if they’re accepting specimens, and if you come across suitable specimens during your field work, donate them. Museums used to launch massive multi-year expeditions to collect specimens (some still do, but they’re typically weeks rather than years!). And the specimen doesn’t have to be from your field site – if you come across a dead animal in reasonably good condition, bag it, freeze it, and drop it off. Many specimens come from window strikes (birds), from along highways (mammals), or even aircraft! […]

By: Expiscor (24 June 2013) | Arthropod Ecology

Expiscor (24 June 2013) | Arthropod Ecology — Mon, 24 Jun 2013 12:12:32 +0000

[…] Speaking of museums, herbarium specimens reveal the footprint of climate change… another reason to data-base museum specimens! […]

By: DPI Diary | Fresh from Florida Plant Industry

DPI Diary | Fresh from Florida Plant Industry — Fri, 21 Jun 2013 18:05:04 +0000

[…] colleagues at UF/IFAS Entomology pointed us to a blog entry on the Stories that Labels on Spider Specimens Can Tell that featured a specimen catalogued in 1984 […]

By: Morsels for the mind – 21/6/2013 › Six Incredible Things Before Breakfast

Morsels for the mind – 21/6/2013 › Six Incredible Things Before Breakfast — Fri, 21 Jun 2013 11:31:30 +0000

[…] label tells a story. Wonderful post on the discoveries one can make looking at museum specimens of spiders. A web of […]

By: Chris Buddle

Chris Buddle — Fri, 21 Jun 2013 00:21:00 +0000

Thanks Chris -yes, it’s fun for history, geography, biology and more. That why I think ‘notes from nature’ has real potential. (but high cost re: getting photos done and uploading them, organizing etc)

-interesting point about the Criddle label. Maybe a typo? Curious.

HA – I knew a Roughrider fan would comment on my ‘lack of boats’ comment in SK. Hee hee. And I did not know about that shipwreck. Very cool.

Thanks again for the comments.

By: Chris Buddle

Chris Buddle — Fri, 21 Jun 2013 00:17:41 +0000

Hi Joe – thanks for the comment. I do want to trial a ‘big’ group up in the collection and do an ‘assembly line’ approach – I think you are right & it is a good idea – there will be some ways to get the photo process down to much shorter duration. Hmm… maybe even work this into a class project…

By: Chris MacQuarrie (@CMacQuar)

Chris MacQuarrie (@CMacQuar) — Fri, 21 Jun 2013 00:10:29 +0000

Great post. I data based some of the specimens at the UofA Strickland Museum and at the Northern Forestry Centre. It was a lot of fun (especially for a history buff like me) to go through that old information.

The Criddle label is neat, I wonder if that is how he spelled the name of his homestead? In most literature it’s listed as ‘Aweme’.

oh, and this loyal Roughrider fan would be remiss if he didn’t point out: Saskatchewan is ~10% water by surface area; the province’s name means ‘Swiftly flowing river’ in Cree; Saskatoon even has it’s own shipwreck: http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/shipwreck-from-1908-found-in-south-saskatchewan-river/article5356495/ and the province was the site of a naval battle: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Batoche. So finding a spider on a boat isn’t THAT surprising to this flat-lander.

By: Spider Joe (@arachnojoe)

Spider Joe (@arachnojoe) — Thu, 20 Jun 2013 22:20:02 +0000

What a fun article! There may be a way for you to photograph much faster. Consider my lesson learned. We would have groups of children visit the UT insect collection to work on spiders. I took one group of kids, and someone else took another. The goal was to transfer specimens from leaky plastic vials to glass vials and to divide specimens among multiple vials if they were noticeably different, duplicating labels as necessary. (These were all from pitfall traps, so the labels were pretty much all the same except for date and trap number.) By the time we finished one tray, the other group had finished three trays. The difference: they had set themselves up in an assembly line, so that no one ever had to transition between tasks, arranging it so that faster tasks preceded slower tasks. The cumulative time for the effort was the minimum time required for the collection as a whole rather than per vial.

By: Chris Buddle

Chris Buddle — Thu, 20 Jun 2013 22:11:24 +0000

Thanks for the comments! Glad there are lots of other keen biologists out there who appreciate, treasure and enjoy museum/collection data. Ever specimen is like a little present; a little puzzle. A test of geography & handwriting.

By: Caitlin MacKenzie (@CaitlinInMaine)

Caitlin MacKenzie (@CaitlinInMaine) — Thu, 20 Jun 2013 21:03:09 +0000

I digitized the Acadia herbarium specimens two summers ago & can relate to the labels telling stories. As a plant ecologist, I’d love to peek into the collections of other taxa & I think projects like Notes from Nature make for interesting citizen science collaborations.