[NHCOLL-L:901] Re: mounted specimen preservation

[Sean Barry]

On Wed, 14 Feb 2001, Dennis Paulson wrote:

> >>    About three decades ago, I and family visited Lower Fort Gary (sp?),
> >>a restored fort/slash trading post north of Winnipeg.  They had an
> >>upstairs room with hundreds of beaver, lynx, and other skins hanging
> >>from the rafters.  There was no odor nor sign of dermestid damage.  I
> >>asked an attendant how they kept these pest-free, but she had no idea.
> >>Unfortunately, I never followed through on it.
> >>    Thanks for any help you can provide.
> >>Evan B. Hazard, Ph.D.

About 12 years ago I stored three cervid skins (deer, moose, elk, tanned
but not poisoned) in an open box in my uninsulated attic, and forgot all
about them until I found them again recently.  Despite all those years
there was no sign of dermestid or any other bug damage, though a piece of
the same moose skin that was left unprotected in a downstairs closet was
attacked and de-haired in a few weeks.  My surmise is that the summer in
northern California is too hot for dermestids, and likewise the winter is
too cold (or that the eggs won't hatch in those temperature extremes).  
Perhaps the upstairs high rafter location for the skins you saw was too
hot and cold for the beetle larvae to survive.

Sean Barry
*********************
Sean J. Barry
The Rowe Program in Molecular Genetics (mail address)
  and The Section of Evolution and Ecology
University of California
Davis, California  95616
(530) 752 9160
FAX (530) 754 6015
sjbarry at ucdavis.edu