[Nhcoll-l] Vial jar system for easier specimen collection maintenance

Fri Mar 18 13:18:37 EDT 2016

Greetings William,

The previous plastic bag method was instituted by Jack McCoy in order to sequester clutches of hatchling turtles primarily generated by Dick Vogt in the late 1970's. As I mentioned, the rubber bands failed, but had heat sealing existed back then, it would have solved the problem better. We have on the order of 10-12,000 hatchling turtles from many hundred clutches, and having them grouped together greatly facilitated a visitor about a decade ago who photographed many clutches to see if variable temperature incubation not only affected sex determination as Vogt studied, but also affected plastral pattern on the bellies of Graptemys. The specimens were stout enough that weight of specimens above the individual clutches at the bottom of the gallon jars were not affected by above bagged clutches.

In the system I used last spring, I used larger vials and small jars to contain the tadpoles, and the hard supports does not damage the specimens. I will probably utilize it in the future for instances where stomach contents are kept in vials because cotton is not the best cover for material with very delicate small parts or containing sharp objects that can catch on the cotton like partially consumed insect legs and such.

SPR
________________________________________
From: nhcoll-l-bounces at mailman.yale.edu [nhcoll-l-bounces at mailman.yale.edu] on behalf of William Shepherd [w.shepherd at swiftcurrent.ca]
Sent: Friday, March 18, 2016 10:51 AM
To: nhcoll-l at mailman.yale.edu
Subject: Re: [Nhcoll-l] Vial jar system for easier specimen collection maintenance

Hello Stephen,

        I've been watching this discussion with much interest. My current institution does not have any wet specimens but my previous one had a few hundred, though these were largely single specimens in their own container ranging from human organs to insects and animal fetuses. I think your bag method is really ingenious and deals with many of the issues in the various discussions around the 'proper' way to do this. The only questions I had, have you had any issue with specimens on the bottom being damaged from the weight of the items above it since the bags don't have much crush strength? While many of these specimens are quite light and will be somewhat buoyant I was thinking there must be a greater pressure on the bottom specimens. Is there any issue with physical damage when it comes to retrieval of specimens from the larger containers? We'd all take care but pulling bags in and out versus vials seems like it may put additional strain on the physical integrity of the specimens.

        I'd love to hear, as likely the list as a whole, your thoughts. Again, great idea.

William Shepherd
Collections Officer
Swift Current Museum
44 Robert Street West
Swift Current, Saskatchewan
S9H 4M9
Phone: 306-778-4815
Fax: 306-778-4818

-----Original Message-----
From: nhcoll-l-bounces at mailman.yale.edu [mailto:nhcoll-l-bounces at mailman.yale.edu] On Behalf Of Rogers, Steve
Sent: Friday, March 18, 2016 7:24 AM
To: joachim.haendel at zns.uni-halle.de; nhcoll-l at mailman.yale.edu
Subject: Re: [Nhcoll-l] Vial jar system for easier specimen collection maintenance

At the Carnegie various methods have been used in the last 35 years I have worked in the collection using the vial jar system to house removed gonads of herps, anuran eggs sets removed from specimens, stomach contenst, or small tadpoles. Sometimes the method is exactly as that used by Lex, but failures included vials topped with old bakelight, as did many polyethylene type lids. Some subsets, like tutle hatching clutches, were put with a thin plastic bag cloased with a rubber-band, and then multiple clutches put in a larger container. The rubber band degraded and became goopy, making a larger mess.

Last year when cataloguing a large series of sets of tadpoles in alcohol, and not wanting to use (or have on hand) circa 300 of the 200ml parfait jars, I began using a variant of the bag system for groups of tadpoles. Small jars, perhaps 10 ml volume were filled with the group of tadpoles, and then placed in a plastic bag which was sealed with a heat sealer. The resultant bag had a very small hole placed on top and then by placing it in larger fluid contained jar, all the air could be forced out and multiple jars could be placed in one 2-liter or gallon jar. This system, perhaps not tried elsewhere, eliminates the large cotton wad on this larger jar, keeps all contents of a series of tadpoles from the same species together in a single easily checked larger jar, and saves use of hundreds of the smallest gasket jar we have. It also would prevent losing or mixing contents should the larger jar break.

It always seemed excessive to use 200 ml jars to house three or four very small tadpoles, especially when faced with very limited space and small budgets.

Stephen P. Rogers (Mr.)
Collection Manager of Section of Birds
and Section of Amphibians and Reptiles
Carnegie Museum of Natural History
4400 Forbes Avenue
Pittsburgh PA 15213-4080
Phone: 412-622-3255 or 3258
Email: rogerss at CarnegieMNH.org
https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=http-3A__www.carnegiemnh.org_birds_index.html&d=AwIFAg&c=-dg2m7zWuuDZ0MUcV7Sdqw&r=CLFZJ3fvGSmDp7xK1dNZfh6uGV_h-8NVlo3fXNoRNzI&m=Bll6S23OIAMJ_EhpqsR6GI6XelpWWsckNrpUAI6Woz8&s=nGPknqf3jpx8g4xRvkyHbrUUttnrJcgjbH_Yp7oijsc&e=
https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=http-3A__www.carnegiemnh.org_herps_index.htm&d=AwIFAg&c=-dg2m7zWuuDZ0MUcV7Sdqw&r=CLFZJ3fvGSmDp7xK1dNZfh6uGV_h-8NVlo3fXNoRNzI&m=Bll6S23OIAMJ_EhpqsR6GI6XelpWWsckNrpUAI6Woz8&s=ntrauK8ywPefR-saAOuM_qyW3kV7vSDa5MLL7hc42nM&e=
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The views, opinions, and judgments expressed in this message are solely those of the author. The message contents have not been reviewed or approved by Carnegie Museums of Pittsburgh
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________________________________________
From: nhcoll-l-bounces at mailman.yale.edu [nhcoll-l-bounces at mailman.yale.edu] on behalf of Joachim Haendel [joachim.haendel at zns.uni-halle.de]
Sent: Wednesday, March 16, 2016 3:19 AM
To: nhcoll-l at mailman.yale.edu
Subject: Re: [Nhcoll-l] Vial jar system for easier specimen collection maintenance

Well - but on the other hand there is a risk that the objects get tangled in the cotton plugs and can be damaged - at least at a liquid collection of arhropods.

Joachim

---- On 16 Mar 2016 at 7:04, Bodil Kajrup wrote:

> One more thing: vials can be put upside down to reduce risk of desiccation, should the gasket fail.
>
> Bodil
> Fish collection, Stockholm

--
Joachim Haendel
Centre of Natural History Collections
of the Martin-Luther-University
- Entomological Collection  -

Domplatz 4
D-06099 Halle (Saale)
Germany

Phone:  +49 345 - 55 26 447
Fax: +49 345 - 55 27 152
Email: joachim.haendel at zns.uni-halle.de

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NHCOLL-L is brought to you by the Society for the Preservation of
Natural History Collections (SPNHC), an international society whose
mission is to improve the preservation, conservation and management of
natural history collections to ensure their continuing value to
society. See https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=http-3A__www.spnhc.org&d=AwIFAg&c=-dg2m7zWuuDZ0MUcV7Sdqw&r=CLFZJ3fvGSmDp7xK1dNZfh6uGV_h-8NVlo3fXNoRNzI&m=okxzbgNBrjNzLrHAV5hbOFTFt_dxHvuy8jiitKLZao8&s=Kjjcq93Px8aMe17BqbMOEcm5osrunSxHfQDiCOOQteQ&e=  for membership information.
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