I’ve just illustrated my method for spreading microlepidoptera, go explore the techniques page. Who is courageous enough to attempt it?
New Technique Page!I’ve just illustrated my method for spreading microlepidoptera, go explore the techniques page. Who is courageous enough to attempt it?
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Skepticism |
That is a beautifully spread specimen!
To me, this is both encouraging and discouraging at once.
Well hopefully more encouraging – but why discouraging?
This looks awfully complicated compared to the animals I normally work with (moth flies – Diptera: Psychodidae). For each specimen of these I just have to
– fix the little bugger in ethanol
– dissect their bodies into tagmata, including removing the wings
– mount the wings on microscope slides
– bleech the remaining animal, most often by boiling them for a day in KOH
– acidify each dissected specimen (to balance out the KOH)
– dehydrate each dissected specimen in consecutive alcohol baths
– mount the head, thorax and abdomen on the same microscope slide as the wings without squashing any of them too flat to see the diagnostic characters
– wait some weeks for the slides to dry.
This microlepidoptera mounting does on the other hand seem like lots of work. It does, however, seem quite rewarding; I will probably try some of these methods later in the season.