Category Archives: In the Collection

The flavours of loss: a tale of a moth

Posted on July 25, 2014 by terry wheeler

Loss comes in many forms. Sometimes loss is a sharp, sudden thing; sometimes it’s a slow, fading twilight, creeping in so slowly you don’t even notice when it gets there. This is a story about both those kinds of loss. … Continue reading →

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A moth, a fern, a feline: a species name story

Posted on July 11, 2014 by terry wheeler

As taxonomists, we give names to new species that we describe. The name is entirely up to us (within a few limits imposed by rules of grammar, and a recommendation that they not be offensive). Sometimes it’s easy to figure … Continue reading →

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From grass to graphs: a fly’s journey. Part 2

Posted on September 13, 2012 by terry wheeler

The first part of this post took us from fieldwork to pinned specimens. After insect specimens are mounted and labelled, the real taxonomic work starts. The Linnean hierarchy (class, order, family, genus, etc.) isn’t just a list of categories to … Continue reading →

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From grass to graphs: a fly’s journey

Posted on September 4, 2012 by terry wheeler

In my last post I talked about the workload in processing and identifying insects in the course of a big ecological project. It occurred to me that some readers may not be aware of the many steps in the process … Continue reading →

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When hobbies collide

Posted on June 17, 2012 by terry wheeler

I’ve been spending a lot of time in the lab lately, trying to wrap up some research as well as looking ahead to the field season of insect collecting. And wandering through the museum, looking through boxes and bins and … Continue reading →

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A collection of collections

Posted on May 4, 2012 by terry wheeler

Of the millions of species of insects on earth, many are undescribed, many are currently impossible to identify from published keys or photos, and many identification keys are not as clear as they could be. That’s not news to people … Continue reading →

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Ten thousand pins

Posted on January 23, 2012 by terry wheeler

I was updating our database of Diptera holdings in the museum this week and thinking about the enormous range in numbers of specimens in some families (see my earlier post on “why so many specimens?”). The Lyman Collection is very … Continue reading →

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More than ten reasons flies are great. Part II

Posted on December 26, 2011 by terry wheeler

Diptera are fascinating insects – diverse, bizarre, economically and medically important – but underappreciated by most people other than dipterists. We launched this series in an earlier post with a selection of five randomly selected reasons flies are great. In … Continue reading →

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More than ten reasons flies are great

Posted on November 30, 2011 by terry wheeler

Our insect collection has its roots in an amateur collection. Predictably, that means our holdings are very strong in two orders popular with collectors – butterflies and moths (Lepidoptera) and beetles (Coleoptera). We had, at last count, about 130,000 pinned … Continue reading →

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“why so many specimens?”

Posted on October 28, 2011 by terry wheeler

I was giving a tour of the museum last week to some alumni who were back on campus for Homecoming and somebody asked me that question. The Lyman Museum has in the neighborhood of three million specimens, but we have … Continue reading →

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