Collection reflection 2015/16

All the collections are handed in, and many of them look amazing, and people should be really proud. I was really impressed at the amount of work that has evidently gone into some of them, from the range of specimens and the careful labelling, to the books full of detailed notes and descriptions (often cheeringly enthusiastic).

I think where they're not so good, it may have been because of underestimating the time it would take to do the project, leaving too little time on the collecting or identifying. Or that people had not added regularly to the notebook to provide evidence for all their traipsing about and collecting and identifying. When I looked at the collections without a decent notebook, I thought, 'Did they just pluck these names out of the air?' Also sometimes the labelling was pretty rough, and I'm sure that was sheer lack of time management, because who wouldn't want to get a few easy extra points for a neat 'who/what/where/when' label if they had time?

But some general thoughts - any collection is going to be better if you can get out to a wider range of habitats, because then you'll find a wider range of species - I'd always recommend doing this if you can.

And you need to pick your group carefully - some groups present particular inherent difficulties of collection. I'm thinking groups like mammals (where you'll have to pick specimens up opportunistically over a long period of time, not that anyone picked those this year) and moths (where winter and limited equipment makes things more difficult - I know some would-be moth collectors had to change tack).

Conversely, some groups aren't so difficult to collect, but you do need to factor in time to come in and use the keys to identify them. I'm thinking things like spiders and mosses. If you're like me and enjoy the microscopes and the little buzz of triumphing with the keys, this is a pleasure though, not something to be feared. It was really nice to see other people getting into this. And remember you can start as early as you like and I'm always happy to help you. It's true that much was achieved by all the people that brought things in in the last few weeks, but you're bound to get more one-to-one assistance (and a head start) if you bring a few specimens in earlier.

I've made a little table summarising (what I see as) a few pros and cons of the different groups:

 

I'd be happy to hear any feedback to help me help students better next year - please let me know.