Natural History Museum, London. 13th May 2011.
Day 5 – Mineralogy and Arachnids
Peter Tandy took us on a tour of the mineralogy collections and yet again…wow! The collection is enormous and I never really appreciated before how stunning and striking some of the displays of minerals could be. One great aspect of the mineral collection is that they have remained in their original cabinets. There is no risk of pest infestation with this collection, only being handled roughly and breaking apart.
We then had a guided tour given to us by Jan Beccaloni, who is the curator of the arachnid and myriapoda collections. This was fantastic and such a great opportunity to see such incredible specimens with an enthusiastic expert explaining what they were. The collection had both dried specimens pinned in draws and wet specimens housed in alcohol jars. The specimens which Jan pulled out from the alcohol jars were preserved so well that you could be forgiven into thinking they were still alive!
I thoroughly enjoyed my week at the Natural History Museum and am already looking forward to my return trip. Being able to see behind the scenes of such a magnificent place had always been a dream of mine. Now that it has become a reality, I’m even more enthusiastic about working in a museum which houses such fantastic specimens at my finger tips. The greatest of thanks goes out to all who were involved with organising the trip and of course all the enthusiastic staff who gave up their time to show us what goes on in each department.
Natural History Museum, London. 12th May 2011.
Day 4 – Entomology
I was extremely looking forward to Thursday because I find arthropods particularly fascinating and I was also keen to be back inside the entomology department –my previous place of voluntary work.
We began the day by joining a guided tour by Max Barclay, who delighted us with tales of past and present insect collectors. Max revealed one particularly interesting drawer which contained the beetles brought back on the H.M.S Beagle, by Charles Darwin¹. I found this astonishing and was almost star struck that those very same beetles which he collected were right there in front of me. I wasn’t the only person dazzled by this – one girl on the tour actually collapsed², much in the same way young women used to collapse back in the 60’s when attending a Beatle’s concert. Perhaps it’s something in the sound of beetle which just seems to attract people and create a bit of hysteria?
Max also intrigued us by speaking highly of Alfred Russell Wallace³, a great naturalist, geographer and explorer who also proposed a similar theory of evolution to Charles Darwin.
The entomology collection (which comprises of insects, arachnids and myriapoda) holds around 29 million specimens (too many to count!) with Coleoptera and Lepidoptera making up over 50%. Previous to the Darwin Centre, the specimens were housed in beautiful wooden cabinets, but with the constant risk of pest attack. The majority of specimens are now housed in the secure, environmentally controlled area of the Darwin Centre where state of the art pest management ensures their long term survival.
The tour continued into the large tank room where mammals, reptiles and fish are stored in alcohol which creates a gruesome yet intriguing atmosphere. Although we had previously visited this mini house of horrors on Monday, this time we had an extra element –Oliver Crimmen. Oliver works with preserving the fish specimens and surprised us all by opening up the large metal tank to reveal some giant specimens of sunfish, sturgeon and sharks. The smell of fish mixed with alcohol hit me like Mike Tyson had been unleashed into the room. It certainly confirmed to me why as yet, nobody (to my knowledge) has invented an alcoholic fish cocktail. Oliver was fantastic at telling us amusing and informative anecdotes about each fish specimen and how it came to be laid to rest inside a vat of alcohol at the museum. The central piece of the spirit collection was the giant squid measuring over 8.5 metres long – a true giant of the mollusc world!
After the tour, we briefly spent time sorting out a malaise sample for North America, by separating the insects into Orders. This is something that I’d previously been working on with Erica McAlister in my volunteer days, so the process was familiar to me.
After lunch Alessandro Giusti gave us an absolutely brilliant tour of the Entomology collections housed inside the Cocoon. His enthusiasm mixed with some fantastic specimens made for an exceptionally interesting experience which I will not forget in a hurry. Some of the specimens we were shown can be seen in these pictures. A few examples of the many interesting specimens included; months that mimicked wasps, moths that synthesise cyanide, Thysania agrippina which was far larger than my hand span, Darwin’s Moth*, huge spider-killing wasps, giant Orthoptera with rainbow like wings, stick insects which looked more like leaves than actual leaves, Chan’s megastick –the recently discovered longest insect in the world and numerous spiders, scorpions and centipedes which had an appearance that would disturb even the hardiest of arthropod lovers.
Alessandro then showed us examples of the damage caused by verdigris, which are long green strands protruding from the copper pin after it has come into contact with lipids. It is almost impossible to remove the specimen from the pin once verdigris has appeared but Alessandro demonstrated how it can be done. The de-pinning machine contains an electric charge which is passed through the copper pin with the specimen attached. This warms up the pin which causes the point of contact with the specimen to melt allowing the specimen to gently slide off the pin. The specimen can then be re-pinned. This process caused no damage to the specimen making it an idea solution.
¹ The display drawer was labelled with the following information: Beetle specimens collected by Charles Darwin (1809-1882) comprise an important part of the insect collections housed at The Natural History Museum in London. They form part of the National Collection and still have an important role in modern research. The specimens seen here were collected during the historic circumnavigation of the Earth by the Royal surveying vessel H.M.S. Beagle commanded by Captain Robert Fitzroy. Supported by Professor J. S. Henslow of Cambridge. Darwin, then aged 23, was appointed naturalist on the Beagle which sailed in December 1831 to return in October 1836. Many of the species he returned with were new to science and were later described by some of the greatest names in entomology.
² After 30 seconds, the girl recovered and was completely fine. Officially it was due to lack of breakfast, but I think it was beetlemania making a come back.
³ Wallace discovered that animals were divided into two distinct parts in the Indonesian archipelago: on one side animals that were common to Australia were present and on the other side the animals were of Asian origin. He created the Wallace Line and went on to become the leading expert in animal geographical distribution. Wallace was the co-discoverer of natural selection, studying the concepts of warning colouration in animals and speciation.
* Darwin’s Moth known as Xanthopan morgani, was not actually discovered until 20 years after Darwin’s death. Darwin was shocked by an orchid specimen he received for study named Angraecum sesquipedale, which had a spur (nectary) of over a foot long. Darwin predicted that there must be a moth with a foot long proboscis which existed in order for the orchid to be pollinated. In 1903 this moth was discovered in Madagascar.
Natural History Museum, London. 11th May 2011.
Day 3 -Botany
Today was plants. Not everyone’s favourite part of biology, but nonetheless, they are essential to life on Earth and without the study of plants, perhaps the study of genetics would have taken place far later on in history¹.
We began the day with a tour of the cryptogram herbarium followed by a tour of the old flowering plants store. This old store was an art exhibition in its own right! Row upon row of old wooden cabinets which stood some 15 ft tall, stretching into the far distance. It was very impressive but almost a sad situation to witness its slow and careful demise. An essential move for the museum though, as the room was borderline tropical and there would be no way to prevent the Stegobium paniceum (Biscuit beetle) from having a 365 day of the year banquet. The herbarium collection is currently being relocated to the Darwin Centre, which if I haven’t mentioned already, has a carefully controlled climate, keeping the new herbarium store room at below 16 degrees which prevents the pest insects from moving about much, eating and making babies. It is also highly secured with sealed cupboards which prevent the insects from entering the store in the first place.
We were introduced to Jacek Wajer who gave us a fantastic tour of the herbarium store room. We then took part in the cataloguing process, where each plant specimen must contain five basic parts of information; the date collected, collector, taxonomy, collection location and the collection number. The arrangement of collections is in a sequence of 26 geographical regions which have been agreed by dividing the world map into these sections. It is possible to search for the Genus alphabetically and then use the number associated with the geographical location to find the desired specimen. It is essential to put back a specimen in the right place after removing it, as in a collection of millions, a lost specimen could take one hundred years searching to find it again (and then you remember you left it in the tea room!).
We were later shown around the Botany library, which is specifically for that department. This was a beautiful old style library full of rare and fascinating books. It’s fantastic how several departments have their own libraries attached to their specific area.
Christopher Davis showed us the loans process after lunch which involves using Ke Emu. Due to the gigantic size of the herbarium collection, not all specimens have been accessioned, so Christopher demonstrated how to accession them whilst simultaneously checking them out for a loan. It was a very useful process to observe as it is an essential part of museum curation and a skill that I will need to acquire in the near future.
We rounded the day off by observing Jacek working on a project involving the creation of a database which will contain a list of every species which the museum has in the herbarium store. This is a life’s work as it also involves checking each synonym of each species to make sure one species is not recorded as two, three or more, as is sometimes the case where scientists around the globe have described the same species and both given it a different name.
¹ Mendel, who worked briefly as a gardener, cultivated pea pants to study their inheritance. He discovered that a quarter of the pea plants had purebred recessive alleles, half were hybrid and a quarter were purebred dominant. This led to Mendel’s Laws of Inheritance which were derived from his Law of Segregation and Law of Independent Assortment. Mendel’s paper was published in 1866, but sadly he received little if any praise for his work, the importance of which, was not recognised until after his death.
Natural History Museum, London. 10th May 2011
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Day 2 –Palaeontology
In the morning, palaeobotanist Lil Stevens took us on a guided tour of the palaeontology collections. The collection of rocks and fossils is truly remarkable, with some specimens dating back 500 million years and beyond. Jumping forward 500 million years or so, we were treated to specimens which were exciting for a different reason – they had fame attached to them and had managed to secure themselves in history. Captain Scott, who dedicated and gave his life to human exploration of this world, had managed to collect fossils and rocks from the Terra Nova on his expedition. These now reside in the palaeontology department, which to my delight, I was able to handle. The next ‘celebrity’ specimens were that of Charles Darwin. During his exploration of the Galapagos Islands, Darwin had come across some fossilised tree bark, which was now in my hand, being examined and handled as he may have done 170 years ago.
Compared to other collections, fossils are sturdy objects which have little or no attraction to pests. However, pyrite decay is a serious problem which can cause damage and destroy specimens. The pyrite and marcasite minerals are affected when the specimen comes into contact with air which oxidises the sulphide component to form sulphur dioxide and sulphates. The acidic nature of this can destroy specimens and also damage labels which may contain irreplaceable valuable information. Lil showed us an ongoing experiment in which the fossil specimens had been stored in oxygen-free bags and then housed in an oxygen-free storage cupboard. This will be monitored for ten years. Another cause of pyrite disease is where specimens are stored with the relative humidity (RH) above 60%. It would seem like a simple solution to store the specimens in an RH controlled environment where the humidity could be reduced to create a dry environment, however this is not as simple as it would first appear. When the RH reaches a level of below 35%, some specimens begin to crack and break apart due to the loss of moisture from within the rock. A tricky predicament, but with some of the top experts working on the problem, I’m sure a desirable solution can be created.
The next part of the tour was particularly exciting for me. Having been fascinated and partially obsessed with the thought of giant sea monsters once roaming our oceans, it waswith great amazement that we were shown around a store dedicated to the plesiosaur! This giant prehistoric beast, which would win first prize in the annual ‘Lochness monster look-a-like’ competition, once hunted in the worlds oceans 220 million – 65 million years ago. This made it a true survivor, having remained relatively unchanged for at least 155 million years, but perhaps even longer.
We were introduced to a PhD. researcher named Roger, who took the time to show us the plesiosaur collection where he was able to demonstrate his enthusiasm of having the best collection of plesiosaurs in the world at his finger tips. An interesting research programme which has kick started the cogs in some of the great scientific brains, involves the study of the cervical vertebrae of the plesiosaur; several specimens have a different number of vertebrae in their necks. This currently both baffles and excites geneticists and scientists as the number of vertebrae is usually set in stone (no pun intended) and cannot change, even over millions of years. For example, almost all mammals have seven cervical (neck) vertebrae. We have seven, a rat has seven and a giraffe has seven. Some mammals have six, a species of sloth for example, but it’s clear that considering how most mammals have the same amount of cervical vertebrae, there must be some genetic process preventing an increase or decrease in vertebrae taking place. According to Roger, it is pretty much impossible (or very difficult) for a species to increase the number of vertebrae in a particular region, without causing negative implications. It is far more common place for the size of each vertebrae to change dramatically in size, which is what has taken place with the evolution of the long neck in the giraffe for example. This particularly interested me, having completed my undergraduate dissertation on the subject of the regionalisation of vertebrae in chordates. So the plesiosaur is kicking up a storm of excitement within the genetics world and also in the palaeontology world, by seemingly defying some basic rules of genetic alteration and has also now left scientists wondering if they have correctly classified the plesiosaur specimens- does a different number of neck vertebrae indicate a different species? Or was it common for plesiosaurs to have different numbers of neck vertebrae but still be of the same species? This vast collection of plesiosaurs demonstrates the importance and value to science of maintaining and continuing to collect specimens. If it were not for scientists preserving and collecting so many specimens of what was previously thought to be the same animal, then the difference in neck vertebrae would never have been discovered –so hooray for museums!
We were able to get some hands on experience of plesiosaurs, aiding Roger by measuring plesiosaur vertebrae from some of the many specimens which are housed there. We also saw the incredible Cryptoclidus specimen.
(Seen here: http://www.plesiosauria.com/cryptoclidus.html).
In the afternoon we were taught the importance of storing fossils correctly, by ensuring that they are secured in their draws, usually using foam and acid-free paper to stop them wobbling and trying to escapes each time a draw is opened. One fossil actually jumped out of the draw and began to make a roll for it, heading towards a slightly ajar door. Luckily, Lil was on hand to trip up the fossil and bring it back safely to it’s correct position.*
I was shown into the lab where I managed to spend half an hour looking at the vast coral collection. Once again this was an enormous collection, some of which had only recently been brought to the museum from Indonesia.
To round off the day, we were shown the procedures for loaning out items for various reasons. This is actually quite a complex system which requires all sorts of legal thinking and of course you need to ensure that objects are lent out correctly as we wouldn’t want them disappearing now would we.
* Dramatisation, may not have happened.
Natural History Museum, London. 9th May 2011
Day One – Zoology
We were introduced to Clare Valentine who is the head of the zoology collections at the NHM. Clare explained the importance of the collections which are used in numerous ways to educate and delight enthusiasts from all walks of life.
We were taken on a tour of the zoology¹ department’s many store rooms by Clare, which allowed us to see behind the scenes and open up numerous cupboards and draws which were hiding literally millions of fantastic specimens. As well as taxidermy, we were shown the spirit collection, comparative anatomy and osteology collections. The spirit collection is housed at around 13 degrees Celsius which greatly reduces the level of alcohol which is lost through evaporation. The collection contains fish, retiles, amphibians and mammals, all of which add to the chilling effect of the room due to the horrified expressions on some of the specimen faces. The main benefit of preserving the specimen in alcohol compared with drying the specimen is that pest attacks are significantly reduced. The glass jar also allows for great viewing of the object without the need to handle or expose it to the environment, although it is not possible to view every part of the specimen through the jar, so some interference may be necessary.
Clare thoroughly explained the processes which bone specimens undergo to become part of the osteology collection. One process which strips flesh from bones, involves the use of Dermestes maculates which is a flesh eating beetle. The carcass is stored in a secure container along with the beetles, with the aim of them stripping it completely of flesh and leaving the bones and collagen untouched. It is still common practice for some scientists to use hydrogen peroxide or carbon tetrachloride to remove flesh but this damages the bones and alters their structure. This could also damage DNA structure which is increasingly being used in studies. In addition to this, it is not known what scientists will wish to collect from a specimen in the future, so it is important to maintain the bones with the least possible damage inflicted upon them. There is a downside to using these beetles; The first disadvantage is that the beetles must be closely observed as if they are left with the carcass too long, they will begin to feast upon the bones. The second reason is that the beetle is actually a museum pest. Releasing a flesh eating beetle into a zoology department would be a disaster for most specimens, so Dermestes maculate² must be housed in secure units at all times.
¹ It is worth mentioning here that although zoology includes the study of Arthropoda such as insects and spiders, the collection of these is so vast, that they have been given their own department- Entomology.
² There is a live beetle web cam demonstrating the destructive yet valuable work which they carry out. This can be seen here http://www.nhm.ac.uk/kids-only/naturecams/beetlecam/
My first memories of visiting the Natural History Museum (NHM) in London are of wonder, delight and a realisation that the world really was much bigger than my collection of He-Man figures and plastic dinosaurs. For a six year old boy, a life size model of a Blue Whale suspended from the ceiling in front of me, was enough to cement enthusiasm and interest in biology for the rest of my life. I was instantly hooked and more importantly, began to question the world around me which had suddenly become a lot bigger and more complex than the early morning cartoons on TV. The more I probed and questioned the specimens in the museum (‘why is the whale a mammal? Why does it breath air but live in the sea? How does it keep warm? Why does it need to keep warm?’) the more answers I received, but with answers came more questions which at times seem to snowball out of control. This brings me to where I am now- a thirty one year old (young) Trainee Biological Curator with even more questions on my mind and an even greater thirst for knowledge.
I began working voluntarily at the Natural History Museum in February 2010, where I became stationed in the Entomology department with Erica McAlister. Since then, I never really looked back and in March 2011, I managed to secure a placement for a Biological Curator Traineeship, which involves spending a year learning the ropes, based in Leeds.
So when I was told I would be visiting the Natural History Museum for a whole week to work with curators from five different departments, I was thrilled!
After a ‘full’ English breakfast with no mushrooms, no bacon and no sausages, I set off to the museum through the busy streets of London, where I met up with my fellow trainees, Russell and Gina. I was thrilled to be back in the museum, which still felt like some sort of really good dream as I stepped behind the scenes once again.
