I love things in jars

You are always welcome to visit the collection of Things In Jars in OJ17. We haven't got quite as many as the Natural History Museum in London: they have 27 km of shelves ( you can go on a tour). But our collection still represents a wide range of creatures (including even some plants). I have little idea about the provenance of many but I do like to wonder how the more exotic ones might have ended up here.

CC image by Mads Bødker

You can preserve creatures in alcohol for a long time. Charles Darwin used the technique when he was on the Beagle in the 1830s, and his specimens still survive (here's an octopus he caught in St Jago, the Verde Islands). He popped it in 'Spirits of Wine', which was indeed made by distilling wine to concentrate the ethanol. But you don't have to go to that trouble: the university has a special license to purchase swirling gallons of the stuff tax-free, so I can give you some for your spiders or fish.

Naturally, if you've been pickled in alcohol for many years, you don't look quite as fresh as you did when you were alive. I do rather like the faded ethereal look of the specimens. However, you'll want to document the colours of yours before they lose them, or it might make your identifications that much more difficult. Spiders lose their colour remarkably quickly.

You'll also want to make sure your containers are properly tight, or you'll get the ethanol evaporating and leaving your specimen high and dry (this is good neither for your specimen nor your mark). I can offer a range of tubes though you might find others you prefer.

The concentration of the ethanol is important too - 70% is recommended (in fact once you start looking into it, a lot of things are recommended) and I can make this up for you.

Looking after a huge collection must be a massive job: this blog at UCL details their 'Project Pickle' to revitalise the specimens they own. Don't say 'pickle' to a museum curator though, it's far too casual :) This is a serious business. The entire UCL blog is very interesting and I recommend a look.

Spider identification course

A peasant woman looking at some ballooning spider silk (for reasons currently lost on me, but probably to do with the fragility of life and impending death, that's art for you) in Chelmonski's painting 'Indian Summer'.

 If I ran a course I'd call it 'Sp- I.D.' But no-one would know what I was going on about, fair enough. I attended one this week in Shropshire, arranged by Manchester Metropolitan University. It was fundamentally about improving your identification of preserved specimens by using keys. So ideal to help me help you with your collections.

I discovered my pronunciation of some spider-bits had been a bit ropey (apparently it's cephalothorax with a hard c, and cry-bellum for cribellum). And I learnt a lot of interesting spider facts about their evolution, various types of silk, and strange habits. The tutors were both enthusiastic and knowledgeable.

I do think that I and the spider-students did very well earlier this year ourselves with the Collins key. We learnt a lot together. It was a steep learning curve.
 
But the good thing about this course was that I could finally ask someone experienced whether certain features were actually present or not - like the silk back-combing 'calamistrum'. When you don't really know what you're looking for you can start imagining things. It is the bane of the lone key-user.

A calamistrum - a cute row of neat bristles for fluffing up silk, sported by some spiders.

And it was good to get to the end of the key and be able to compare my identification with a confirmed name. It gives you a lot of confidence that you really are able to get somewhere. So I feel happier in my ability to help you now.


We were also shown the following:

The Arachnologist's Handbook by Tony Russell-Smith, Geoff Oxford and Helen Smith - it's £10 (free if you join the BAS) and includes lots of information about collecting, preserving and identifying. It also has an improved version of the Collins Spiders family key.

The Spider Bible is this one: Roberts' "Spiders of Great Britain and Ireland". It's very expensive and a bit over the top for your beginner. But the colour plates in volume 2 look amazing. Maybe we'll get a set one day.

This website: Araneae - Spiders of Europe is one I was unaware of before, and it's full of lovely clear close-up photographs. Probably best used once you've got some idea from the Collins key.

And this one: Les Araignees de Belgique et France has excellent photos and diagrams of the reproductive bits that you need to look closely at to to distinguish many species. I think this will be very useful to future spider-collectors.

Also I've just noticed a link to this, the Provisional Atlas of British Spiders v1, by Harvey, Nellist and Telfer. It has a map for each species and a bit of detail about each. There's also a good introduction which might come in handy for your monograph.

The spider figure of the mysterious Nasca Lines, Peru. CC image by Diego Delso.

Snails as a resit suggestion

 I saw this photo of this 4th century mosaic (in the Basilica of Aquileia, Italy) and it reminded me that snails could also be a good choice.

CC image by Sailko

You don't have to use (and kill) "fresh snails" if you don't want to, although you can make life more difficult for yourself if you use very old abandoned shells, as they will have lost their colour and are more likely to be damaged - much harder (if at all possible) to identify.

Some of the snail collections this year (I thought) were really good - their creators had been out to a variety of habitats and so found a good number of species. Others weren't so good because they only contained a handful of species (submitting many examples of the same species isn't going to get you extra points).

I've been surveying plants at a local limestone grassland and I keep coming across snail shells (and live snails) - species you won't find in your garden.

Some species are a lot easier to identify than others. But once you've got a range to look at, you start developing an understanding of what the identification guides are getting at. There's one online at BRERC but I've found it much better to use it in combination with other resources (see here)
as some groups are particularly tricky and a range of descriptions to compare is helpful.
I've also bought a copy of this older book by Kerney and Cameron which you'd be welcome to use - the names can be a bit different but you can cross-reference with Cameron's newer book (which I also have a copy of).

You could come in and view your specimens under a dissecting microscope - it's useful to see the fine sculpturing of the shells. Or otherwise you will really need a handlens for the smaller species.

Asteraceae as an idea for a late collection

I walked round campus yesterday collecting grasses. There were many. I had a go at identifying some but perhaps due to being in recovery of some germ, I wasn't getting very far. Nevertheless, I feel that there must be enough species even without the annoyingly difficult ones, so that grasses could still make a good collection.

My other thought was that Asteraceae must also be possible. Not all of them have flowers at the moment though, which is annoying. But some Asteraceae are a lot more identifiable without flowers than some grasses are with them. So even those might be allowable in your collection so long as they had sufficient features to be identifiable (those features are what you'd want to explain in your notebook).

Pineapple mayweed (CC image by Krzysztof Ziarnek)

These are some species of Asteraceae I've seen recently:

Ragwort
Smooth sow-thistle
Ox-eye daisy
Daisy
Bristly ox-tongue
Dandelion
Spear thistle (I've seen no flowers)
Pineapple mayweed... allegedly smells of pineapple but it just smells peculiar to me
some sort of other mayweed / chamomile
Nipplewort
Lesser burdock (no flowers, but very distinctive leaves at the moment)
Groundsel
Rough hawkbit (with strange forked hairs)
Mouse-ear-hawkweed

That's 14 species and I'm sure there must be plenty more, as there are many things with yellow dandelion-like flowers about at the moment (they just require patience to investigate). You'll need a flower guide with good descriptions - I like Francis Rose's 'Wild Flower Key' and you're welcome to borrow a copy. There are keys in it to the Asteraceae - so if you showed how you'd used them to identify your plants, that would get you many marks.

Again, if you try to visit a range of habitats (for example, go to the seaside or a bit of limestone grassland), you'll be more likely to find a few more species.You can press them easily under some books, but make sure you change their newspaper and leave them long enough, so they dry out and don't go mouldy.

If you'd like some help, please do email me. 

Grasses as an idea for a late spring collection

I had an extremely quick mooch about looking for grasses between the car park and the office this morning. I think I found eight grass species with flowers, certainly seven. It was raining when I left the house so I didn't hang about, but I know there are at least two more in the verges there. And down the road there is some limestone grassland and I know there's another species or two there. Plus I've recently seen three more species in a wood. This comes to 15 species already. Fifteen. So if you're looking for some inspiration, grasses could be the thing.

Image by Matt Lavin.

These are my basic grass-collecting tips:

- Ideally visit a number of different habitats - roadsides, woods, the edge of arable fields, meadows, different geology (acid, calcareous), next to the seaside (eg salmarsh, sand dune). That's how you'll get lots of species. And the more species the better.

- Pick stems that are flowering.

- Pick them all the way down to the ground.

- If the leaves at the bottom are different, make sure you get those and make sure you keep them with the right specimen. Attach a label so you know where you got it from. And make some notes in your notebook about where you are. And maybe draw a picture of the grass in situ.

- It doesn't matter if you fold them up to get them into your plastic bag - you're going to have to fold them to get them on a page unless they're very small. But try to fold them cleanly just once or twice.

- You can store them in the fridge (with the bag all tied up) - but try to identify them as soon as possible or the ligules (an important identification feature) may deteriorate.

- Don't forget to write down your thought processes and draw some pictures in your notebook.

- As soon as you've identified them, get them pressing. You can see details here, it's very low tech but it works fine.

I'm not saying they're easy, they're not. But at least you should be able to find a good variety. And that's a good start. You can read some more via the 'Grasses' link on the left. But please do come and see me with a few specimens, and we can look down the microscopes and figure out all the important grass features together.

Wood melick, by Gilles San Martin. Mmmm wood melick, I like this one.

Some of the species I've seen recently:
Wood millet, Milium effusum
Wood melick, Melica uniflora
Cock's foot, Dactylis glomerata
Timothy grass, Phleum pratense
Annual meadow grass, Poa annua
False brome, Brachypodium sylvaticum

For those that must resit...

I'm thinking maybe grasses might be a good thing to try this time of year. I know, you may think them dull. But they're not, they're very varied. And as with everything, so much better when scrutinised under a lens.

And perhaps even the Asteraceae, I've seen a few recently.

I'm going to see if I can collect a few tomorrow to test feasibility. Watch this space.

Some tips for your field diary

You might think 'oh, the field notebook is only worth 15% of the mark'. But that would be a mistake. The field notebook underpins everything. It's the place where you record details of where and when you went out collecting and what the habitat was like there (essential information for your labels). 'It's also a place to show the thought processes behind your identifications (important in convincing someone you have your 'what' correct - so it has some impact on other parts of the marking).

Whoever's marking your work will want to see and believe that you took your notebook with you. So imperfect handwriting is fine. They definitely don't want to see everything typed up. They're not even after complete sentences. It's got to be legible and coherent of course! But they're not expecting anything especially neat. Don't worry if you drop it in the mud. In fact, go on and drop it in the mud, it'll give it an air of authenticity.

So, what sort of notebook might it be? Obviously that's up to you. But I'll tell you what I like to use, to give you some ideas:

This is my notebook from a course I took about grasses and sedges. It's got a sturdyish cover to withstand abuse from rain, mud and being shoved in my bag. It's ring-bound, which I like, because I can fold it back to make it easier to write in and there's always space to stick in photos and extra bits of paper.

It's A5 which allows room for notes and drawings (I find A6 a bit small but you might like it). You're traditionally supposed to use a pencil in a field notebook - it keeps writing in the rain, and it writes at whatever funny angle you've got it. I hear you can buy notebooks of waterproof paper but frankly I think you're better off staying indoors if it's going to rain that hard.

And it's blank, which I prefer because you can make little sketches and maps, and write wherever you like in whatever direction you like (without being dictated to by the control freaks that make paper with lines).

Here's a page that might have been done in the field (below). You can probably do better than this by the way.

You can see I've put down:
- the date.
- the name of the place.
- the type of habitat it is.
- the reason I've gone there.

- I've taken a photo of the plant in situ (which would be printed out and stuck in later). A sketch is just as good if not better as you can accentuate / annotate what you think's important. If you're collecting twigs, it's quite good to record the general outline of the tree, as this will help with identification.

- I've written down the grid reference and added a map.

- I've noted what the habitat was like at the spot where I found the plant, and given it a six-figure grid reference. With some groups it might be appropriate to note the substrate (eg ash bark or rock), or how shaded or damp it is, etc.

- I've given the specimen a temporary name ('specimen 1') - and I would attach a little label to the specimen somehow. There's nothing like getting home with a big bag of specimens and not knowing where on earth any of them came from.

- I've drawn a few rough sketches of what I thought the important features were 'in life' - the way it grew in a big clump and the distinctive way the flowers hung. These aren't things you'll necessarily remember when you get home, so you should try to do these in the field. It's also important to remember an indication of scale (something I forgot in the example above).

Such sketches were highly approved of in last year's notebooks and will get you extra marks. It can be particularly important if you're collecting invertebrates, because their behaviour won't be evident when they're dead and stuck on a pin. If you're collecting a spider, a photo of its web (if it has one) is useful to support its identification. If it's lichens, you should note what species of tree it's on, or perhaps that it's on earth or stone.

You might be able to key your specimen out while you're still in the field (although that's going to be pretty impossible with some groups like beetles). But it's often hard enough to juggle the specimen, a pencil, a notebook, an id guide, a bottle of juice, a bag, an anorak you wish you'd left behind, a snack, and a load of pots or envelopes or labels. So you may want to attend to some or all of the detailed identification at home. But as this is a 'field notebook' it's important that not all your notes are made at home.

And your notebook is also a very important place to document the thought processes behind your identifications. But I'll cover more of that on the pages that relate to your specific group of choice.

I've written some more recent thoughts here.

Also you might like to look at these pages that show previous students' books.