#insect curation

[cnestus]

(tagged on this post)

@notahorseindisguise sure, just like a general guide on insect pinning? i can do that.

the nice thing about insects is that once they dry they'll stay exactly as they were positioned indefinitely, so the trick is to pin them when they're still pliable. if you're trying to pin an old, dried insect, you can rehydrate them by putting them in an airtight container with some wet paper towels or sponges for 12-24 hours but probably not much longer than that or you'll risk them molding. i spray some ethanol in there too to be safe. as an example, here's my rehydration box with some bee samples:

once your insect is ready to curate, put the pin through the thorax to the right of the midline like in my previous post. now, i'm of the philosophy that if you're pinning an insect, you ought to curate it as best as you can so that its death wasn't in vain, so while the specimen is still pliable, secure it to a thick piece of foam and use more pins to position all the legs and antennae into as pleasing an arrangement as possible. here's a botfly i arranged:

besides the aesthetic reasons, this will also help with future identification if that's a possibility since often insects die curled up with important diagnostic features covered up or otherwise hard to see, so at least unfurling the legs a bit and making sure the wing venation is visible on insects where that's important is a good idea.

sometimes you get a longhorned beetle with very long antennae. this is why you want to have a lot of pins on hand:

for insects that are too small to pin without risking obliterating their thorax, you'll want to point-mount them, which means gluing them to a small paper triangle and pinning that:

i rarely see people do it but you can sometimes curate point-mounted specimens too if they're the right size, though you'll want to do it under a microscope:

then let your specimens set in a nice dry area for at least a day or two:

after that you just need to label them (probably for another post. this one is long enough) and they're good to go. once they dry out they're pretty much good to last forever as long as you keep them protected from mold and pests, so the preservation part is handled just by keeping them in an airtight container if possible or at least one with desiccants/pesticides as needed. at the very least try to toss the specimen box in a feezer for a few days at least a couple times a year. otherwise your nicely curated specimens will end up as dermestid shit:

i think that about covers it! it is worth noting that some soft-bodied insects will shrivel horrible when they dry out. small soft insects like silverfish, termites, springtails, most kinds of larvae, etc should go into a vial of alcohol rather than be pinned. same goes for most non-insect arthropods like spiders and centipedes and millipedes which will also fall apart when they dry. also some larger semi-soft insects will need to be stuffed to keep their abdomen from shriveling up, primarily larger grasshoppers, crickets, stenopelmatids, mantids, and stick insects. i made a post about how to do that here.

[vangoghcore]

by insectmyheart

[onenicebugperday]

Yellow pasha butterfly caterpillar, Herona marathus, Apaturinae (Emperors)

Photographed in China by jiangyou

[lionfloss]

Provence Hairstreak / Tomares ballus

[expressions-of-nature]

by hitoshirezu

[maureen2musings]

Maybeetle

the.lost.woods

[bog-bitch]

Male Valley Carpenter Bee (Xylocopa sonorina), which is in my totally unbiased opinion one of the most underrated insects.

[youredyingthatsallthereis]

entomologist roach who has been applying for grants left and right to try and get money to study endangered & rare insect species around the world and museum owner soap who decides to fund him so that he can ID and collect specimens for his collections on one condition: soap travel everywhere around the world with him so that they can sightsee together

[cravinganescape]

"Fritillary Caterpillars” by Elizabeth Goluch

Sterling silver, 14k & 18k gold & fresh water pearl

[moonsoakedcottage]

Pygospila tyres

Pygospila tyres, also known as Spotted Grass Moth or Chequered Snout Moth, is a vibrant moth species from the Crambidae family, calls the rainforests of Southeast Asia its home—from Hong Kong and India to Thailand and Queensland, Australia. First described over 240 years ago by Pieter Cramer in 1780, this moth has roots tracing back to the Coromandel region of India.

ཐི༏ཋྀ󠀮

10/07/2024 (06:58 a.m.)

‧₊˚ ☁️⋅♡𓂃 ࣪ .༊·˚

[florallyconscious]

Assorted Sphinx Moth Collection - Indiana State University

[rosechata]

lottiehampson

[vangoghcore]

by botanicalmovement

[onenicebugperday]

Orache moth, Trachea atriplicis, Noctuidae

Photographed in France by Matthieu Berroneau

Shared with permission; do not remove credit or re-post!

[lionfloss]

Actias isabellae / Spanish Moon Moth

[expressions-of-nature]

by Kaster Petsai