Why do we need pinned insect specimens?
Since we posted about ten-year-old Sarah’s amazing beetle discovery, we’ve had lots of queries as to why the insect needed to be caught and pinned. It’s a question we’re often asked, so here’s Darren Mann, Head of Life Collections at the Museum, to explain the value of ‘voucher specimens’.
The Museum’s collection houses over five million insect specimens, amassed over the past 300 years. This collection is, in effect, a biodiversity database, but unlike virtual databases, each data point has an associated ‘voucher specimen’ that was caught, pinned and labelled.
Although technical advances in digital macro-photography do reduce the need for some collecting, it is impossible to dissect an image to confirm an identification. So for many groups, even the best photograph in the world is inadequate for identification purposes.
Unlike plants and birds, many insects can only be identified with the aid of a microscope, to study tiny features that distinguish closely-related species. Some groups even require the dissection of minuscule genitalia to really tell them apart.
Entomologists take voucher specimens to enable this correct identification and these are later deposited in museum collections, making them available for further study in years to come. From an entomologist’s point of view, we believe we need to know what a species is, where it occurs and as much about it as possible, so we can inform biodiversity conservation.
The conservation assessment of UK insects by Natural England in their Species Status Reviews has only been possible with the data provided by entomologists, generated from collecting and identifying voucher specimens.
Entomologists follow a Code of Conduct for responsible collecting, which ensures they don’t remove too many species or damage the environment during their work .
There are numerous examples of the value and use of insect collections in contemporary science, including the discovery of previously unknown species in the UK and population genetics for butterfly conservation. Recently a species believed extinct in the UK was rediscovered. This was only made possible by checking the identification of several thousand museum specimens.
Museum collections also contain numerous examples of species now considered extinct in the UK. Without voucher specimens much of this research would be impossible and our understanding of insect distribution patterns, ecology and conservation would be significantly diminished.
What is rare?
Sarah’s False Darkling Beetle (Anisoxya fuscula) has been described as ‘rare’, but what does that mean in reality? For most invertebrates when we talk about a rare species we are not talking about a tiny number of individuals. This conservation status is based on their known distribution and the level of threat they face. A species can be rare if it is only found at one or two locations, but at those locations there may be many thousands of individuals.
The greatest threats to biodiversity are well known and include habitat loss, fragmentation and degradation and pollution, such as pesticides and light. Taking a small number of voucher specimens to confirm the identification of species has negligible impact on its population. But if we don’t know it’s there because we couldn’t identify it, then a housing development destroys its entire habitat… well you get the picture!
Further Reading
Ask an Entomologist
Entomological Collections
Natural England Species Status Reviews
To Kill or Not to Kill That is the Question Part 1
To Kill or Not to Kill That is the Question Part 2
To Kill or Not to Kill That is the Question Part 3
– Austin, J. J., & Melville, J. (2006). Incorporating historical museum specimens into molecular systematic and conservation genetics research. Molecular Ecology Notes, 6(4), 1089-1092.
– Colla, S.R., Gadallah, F., Richardson, L., Wagner, D., & Gall, L. (2012). Assessing declines of North American bumble bees (Bombus spp.) using museum specimens. Biodiversity and Conservation, 21(14), 3585-3595.
– Short, A. E. Z., Dikow, T., & Moreau, C. S. (2018). Entomological collections in the age of big data. Annual review of entomology, 63, 513-530.
– Suarez, A.V., & Tsutsui, N.D. (2004). The value of museum collections for research and society. AIBS Bulletin, 54(1), 66-74. Abstract available here
– Wandeler, P., Paquita, Hoeck, E.A. & Keller, L.F. (2007). Back to the future: museum specimens in population genetics. Trends in Ecology & Evolution 22.12, 634-642.
