I have decided to concentrate on insects since that is where the greatest diversity lies and where so little is known that I can have the real possibility of making a contribution to our knowledge. Unfortunately, I am not all that knowledgeable about insects. But ignorance is curable. It takes study. Indeed, I have bought the late Ross H. Arnett's book American Insects: A Handbook of Insects of America North of Mexico. I did that because BugGuide.net, the best source for insect identification I have found on the internet, says that if one is going to be serious about insect identification one needs the book. And since I don't see how I can document insect diversity without being able to identify the insects then I am going to have to be serious about insect identification.
Arnett called his book a "Handbook". Maybe so, but it certainly requires large hands. It has 931 pages of text not including the Glossary and Index ... if you add those -- and I certain will be using them about as much as the text -- then the page total jumps to 1003.
I have read Part I of the book; the first 6 chapters. Part II contains 31 more chapters each dealing with a particular order of the insects and is the major part of the book. But one doesn't read those until one needs to identify an insect in a particular order.
Chapter 5 of the book is on insect collection techniques and it is what I have been trying to get down (along with picking up tidbits of insect anatomy that will be crucial when I try to identify unfamiliar insects). One thing I particularly need to do is take better field notes. I was going to put them into a tablet so I could search them, but I find that too cumbersome. I'm too old to be a texting whiz like my son. So I have bought a field notebook that I write things in by hand. For me, it is a noticeable improvement.
I have also been capturing some common insects and trying to pin them. I do this because I need to improve my techniques and I have no one to teach me. I feel like I'm reinventing some very old wheels, and by that I mean I do more poor jobs of pinning than I do good ones. But, I DO do some good ones and the good ones are beginning to come more frequently. So I'm learning.
I'm also playing around with the microscope camera. The documentation sucks, so spend most of my time trying different things until I figure out how to do what I want it to do. And although the documentation sucks, I am pleased with all the things it can do.
Finally, I have been trying to accumulate the things I will need. So far I have gotten:
- An insect net.
- Insect pins
- Insect pinning block
- Kill jars
- Dissecting equipment
- An insect loupe
- Microscope camera
- Microscope stage (to allow me to easily position a pinned insect so I can photograph whatever body part I want)
- Specimen jars and labels.
Much of that stuff I've made on my own, other I have bought. So things are coming along, but I have a very long way to go. But almost every day I learn something new.
I solved a small point of confusion for me just today. I captured and pinned a Honey Bee (Apis mellifera). I know bees are in the order Hymenoptera. I also know that hymenopterans, when they have wings (ants are in that order and only drones and newly hatched queens have wings), have two pairs of wings. The forewings are on the second thoracic segment and the hindwings are on the third. However, when I take macro pictures of bees they seem to me to have only two wings. Further, there are several species of flies who make it a point to imitate bees and flies only have two wings; a pair that corresponds to the forewings of hymenoptera and come off the second thoracic segment -- the pair that would come off the third thoracic segment in flies is greatly reduced in size and function as flight stabilizers not as wings.
So I've never really understood how bees can have 4 wings but look so much like they only have two. Now I know.
Close-up view of the area of overlap between the forewing and hindwing of a Honey Bee
I have uploaded that image in its full detail. You can get a better view if you click on the picture. What this picture shows is the overlap of the forewing and the hindwing of the Honey Bee. If you look closely about 80% of the way to the top you can see some serrations. These are on the hindwing. They are actually little hooks that attach to the forewings making the two wings act in unison. That is why bees can have four wings but look for all the world that they have just two. The forewing and the hindwing act as though they are a single wing. That I think is pretty neat.
