Citizen scientists ensure insect collection put to good use
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Do you know the difference between a cat flea and a
dog flea? Neither do I. But recently, I spent an afternoon among people who
were learning.
They were members of the Illinois Grand PrairieMaster Naturalists, a program administered through University of Illinois
Extension that draws members from Livingston, McLean and Woodford Counties. They
had come to the home base of the Illinois Natural History Survey in Champaign
to help entomologists there catalogue an insect collection.
The collection was left behind by James Fry of
Heyworth, a dedicated amateur entomologist who passed away a couple of years
ago. Most of them were collected by Fry himself between the 1950s and the
1980s, but some were also collected by his son and daughter, many of them for 4-H
projects.
I should emphasize this is not the sort of
collection that probably comes to mind when you hear the word “amateur.” It
consists of more than 2300 individual specimens, which are divided among 41
wood-sided, glass-topped, square cases. Many, but not all of the specimens are
labeled with the sort of information that makes them useful to science,
especially the date and place where they were collected, and most are also
identified by name.
[Photos by author: Above, Master Naturalists Maryann Stork, left, and Mary Jo Adams get some help from INHS entomologist Joe Spencer; below, an "easy" case from the Fry collection, containing familiar moths and butterflies.]
Here’s the thing, though. Identifying insects can
be tricky, and if the specimens in a donated collection are to be useful for
scientific and educational purposes, it’s critical that their identity is
confirmed.
That’s where the Master Naturalists came in.
Working in pairs, and with assistance from professional entomologists who
circulated around the room, their job was to catalogue the contents of each case.
Some cases were easy, especially the ones housing
large numbers of big, familiar species. To illustrate this point, entomologist Joe Spencer
gestured toward one with his finger, “Luna moth, luna moth, luna moth . . ..
Other cases contained tiny puzzles.
When I sat down with Master Naturalists Mary Jo Adams and Maryann Stork, they were
sorting out whether the specimens in a vial labeled “dog fleas” were named
correctly. They were not; in fact, they were cat fleas. As Survey entomologist Joe
Spencer explained, examining the length of a tiny spur on a flea’s leg—visible
only under magnification—is the way to tell the difference.
Why would anyone care whether the fleas and other
specimens in a late twentieth century insect collection from central Illinois
are correctly identified? I put this question to Mike Jeffords, a scientist who
recently retired from INHS and who is coordinating work on the Fry collection.
In his words, such a collection represents “a window
into the insect diversity of that part of the state at the time, something we
didn’t have before. Now if someone else wants to examine insect diversity
there, they’ve got a point of reference.”
Parts of the Fry collection will be integrated
into the larger insect collection maintained by the Natural History Survey for
scientific purposes. But other parts will go into wider circulation, as a
traveling exhibit for the Master Naturalist program statewide, and for
educational purposes at Sugar Grove Nature Center located just south of
Bloomington-Normal in Funks Grove.
This disposition of the collection is quite
pleasing to Master Naturalist Phil Houser, who took possession of it from the
Fry family and put it into the hands of the survey. “They wanted it to go
somewhere it would be appreciated and cared for,” he told me, “and that’s where
it is now.”
