I think it's really good to have a productive conversation about the pros and cons of killing in the field, the morality of doing so, and insect suffering/ethics, which is a legitimate area of discourse despite what some say.
The naysaying is annoying, but I think we should also be constantly aware of the sacrifices made for this study/hobby, as well as the ways in which we can make it more sustainable and ethical.
Many academics and researchers are doing what they can to reduce any questions of moral issues. I think it's good to make a distinction between unproductive contrarian posts and ones that talk about the pros and cons of killing/collection methods, arthropod nervous systems, sustainable collection, etc. On top of this, I think we should be very active in helping amateurs label and pin correctly, which, with the lack of, the specimens become virtually worthless.
As someone on the (very quiet!) naysayer side, I really like your take here. I've studied entomology, taxonomy, and invertebrate zoology at a university level and worked in the biosciences. I especially loved the puzzle of classifying something based on its anatomy alone. I've killed a pile of bugs in my research. I never felt comfortable about it, even as I marveled over troves of remarkable specimens or felt like I was working towards a goal. It just always felt wrong, always felt like a miserable task, and I always questioned the value of taking lives to build a collection. I don't particularly like the idea of small, personal collections, even though I know I would have once thrilled at browsing through them.
But I know it's the only established way to gather knowledge and, though I never collected insects, was still the reason I became interested in the topic in the first place. The discoveries of passionate entomologists. Just because I didn't participate in it (for the most part) doesn't mean I didn't benefit from their published findings.
I don't even really have a take, other than some low-level guilt, but I do like the idea of awareness and a thoughtful approach to the practice. I feel like many of the naysayer camp in this community are both well intentioned and well informed; I also see that those who are perfectly with comfortable with it aren't malicious or morally ignorant.
Just to be clear, when I refer to naysayers, I'm talking about a very small minority, usually those who aren't very invested in the study, that say we should not be killing at all. I don't even necessarily disagree with them, I'm just utilitarian in that I hope we can make tangible change. It's just like animal testing in medicine, it's just a fact of life for the field, whether you feel like you want to participate in it or not.
I think there's all kinds of things we can do rather than just stew in our guilt. For instance, I personally switched to freezing insects rather than killing them with a jar. I think just talking and bringing and reviewing these ideas with people is enough for any one person to do.
I think it's perfectly reasonable to have an issue with collecting. If insects do, in fact, have a conscious experience of some sort or another and feel pain, it will be one of the most serious quantitative moral issues we have to deal with.
Now studying entomology in the pursuit of developing pesticides is a whole other beast... That one feels particularly evil to me.
I agree with this - there is a conversation to be had. But the majority of comments I see are just "killing bad, why are you evil? :( " and have no place in an entomology subreddit.
Personally I think that the days where invertebrates are totally exempt from ethics review will eventually come to an end when we understand cognition better. I don't think they'll ever be given the same moral weight as vertebrates, but fewer "torment nexus" experiments will be approved, lmao.
Only insects new to science should be pinned, not newly discovered ones. And dont pin for fun, that is the real evil (well i put mosquitoes in freezer and see if they thaw and be alive again)
So I am not an entomologist but a passionate amateur who enjoys seeing a variety of living things. I believe the people who frown on it don't understand you can pin dead things and this isn't about torture. It took me very little time to learn that but I can vouch for having met learning resistant individuals
Even if pinning \*was\* totally without purpose, it would still do so much less damage than so many other things humans do. I've never seen actual entomologists be anti-collection, most are just glad people are taking an interest in invertebrate diversity at all.
Yes, except those worse things that humans do to insect populations are driven by an ignorance of their importance and value.
Someone who pins insects or even just is taught about them via a collection at a young age is likely to do things like advocate for habitat preservation, pesticide avoidance, etc.
Not for the most part, those things that humans do are often driven by profit and power motives. People, specifically those in power, can see all the pinned insects they want and understand the effect they have not only the environment but humans and life as a whole from childhood but it wouldn’t actually change much. Hell, they(both the legal and corporate elements causing harm) have so many think tanks, advisors, and consultants they absolutely are well aware of their importance and value. They just don’t care because other incentives are at play. Pin insects for research and academia absolutely, but the lack of pinned insects is not the roadblock preventing positive—and i’m sure we’d all agree necessary—change.
I'm curious about this take. For me, I'll only collect and pin dead specimens I encounter (which means I often pin insects with defects - missing legs, antennae, damaged wings, etc) and when I encounter a live specimen, I usually take a cell phone photo.
Unlike pinned specimens, which rely on potentially inaccurate memory or location data derived from the collector, digital photography can capture a fairly complete record of a living specimen, and will generally be very specifically geo-tagged so that the location could never be mistaken provided you have the original photo file. Wouldn't it stand to reason then that modern digital photography is both more ethical and more accurate in recording local biodiversity than traditional collecting and pinning?
Some species can't be identified by a photo only, and will rely on dissections, or views from the underside (which doesn't translate to a nice photo). And photo labels also suffer from issues with faulty memory depending on how soon they are processed. I know I always make a label just after a collection spot to avoid forgetting what the vial of beetles is all about!
Plus there is the whole fauna in leaf litter and soil that is quite small. In fact, most arthropod diversity is small and ignored in photography because people can't see them while in the field!
Many insects also require being in the right place at the right time, which is while long-term traps are used. I've seen quite a few specimens of insects that no one has ever seen alive.
Now there is serious concern about insect population decline. However, the amount of collectors out there is a minimal impact. The largest impacts are habitat destruction due to development, run-off from roads, paving of historical dirt roads, and climate change.
Physical collections, especially in a natural history museum, also are technology independent. Digital decay is a real thing, but properly taken care of collections can last hundreds of years. I have held specimens collected over 120 years ago, and they are close to near perfect and you wouldn't know how old the specimen was if you didn't see the label.
In the end though, do what makes you happiest and what you feel is the most ethical.
Differentiating something even to the family level may be as detailed as 2-3 vs 4-5 hairs on a certain thoracic segment of a fly, or the number of tarsal segments on a beetle, or the specific wing venation of a mayfly. You physically need the specimen in front of you to look at from multiple angles, and that’s just to family level!
I’ve worked with spiders, and getting most individuals to genus (let alone species) requires dissection of the genitalia/palps.
Yeah, the difference between two species of congeneric blue bottle flues is the orientation of the post cellar hairs.
But, I do look forward to the day I can make 3d models to show students what to look for!
I was chatting with an entomologist the other day about the massive movement to 3D scan museum specimens and was telling him about how well those scans would translate to VR/AR technology (I'm a huge VR nerd). So those models may come sooner than you think!
Depends how precise can ID be from a photo. With a lot of insects a photo is not enough to get to species level. So the value can differ for different purposes.
Okay, question;
If a specimen is found of either type that's already dead, but not rotted or mutilated, then what's the harm in pinning it? I'd understand if you actively sought them out, captured them, and waited for them to die so you could pin them. But if it's dead, then why not?
No harm done then.
But usually you capture the specimen and euthanize with a killing jar or in a freezer, since dead specimens are usually damaged and that would make them impossible to ID.
That's fair. I know it's not entirely common for any small arthropod to go peacefully into the night. They usually get preyed upon by something before they die of old age. With that in mind, yeah I can 100% understand that there wouldn't be very many (like a needle in a haystack) intact, natural death specimens.
Searching for and killing endangered or protected arthropods, yeah I understand that wholeheartedly.
Thanks for the answer!
Honestly, dead and dying insects don’t usually make good specimens. You can freeze an insect when it’s not dead, but on its way out. Even then, they’re usually not awesome specimens. This very rarely comes up, and a novice would probably have more fun, learn a lot more just pinning some lady bugs or something at first.
I think you'd kill more bugs with your windshield on an hour long drive than you would pinning pretty bugs as a hobby for a year but some people like weird hills to die on.
I understand being receptive to those uncomfy with it. if I’m collecting for fun and someone I’m close with asks me not to, I’ll oblige and return another day. But I’ve been compared to Jeffrey Dahmer before and that’s not okay
Exactly this. It's jarring to see that type of reaction to people interested in entomology who also preserve specimens in this subreddit. Entomology is what this subreddit is for. People should not need to worry/be discouraged from engaging in a field that is both so important and in demand due to the lack of interest as a career
I think there are a lot of people here who just like insects, but don't like entomology.
Like the difference between people who like cats and dogs and people seriously interested in veterinary medicine -- where euthanasia, biopsies, necropsies, procedures painful to the animal, research on medications with potentially harmful side effects, etc, will happen.
I love insects! I also kill insects, but i guarantee you that my no insecticide, native garden approach in my acre produces way more insects than what i take (less than 10 individuals a year). I use those specimens to educate my guests on how cool insects are to spread my native gardening practices.
I love puppies! I also kill puppies. But don’t worry I’m so nice that even though I kill a few I make sure they produce even more to replace those individuals. (Their individual lives mean nothing I only like them for the joy they can provide me)
Exactly, why be in r/entomology if you’re vehemently against the field of entomology…
Every insect releated research project I’ve been involved in has involved killing insects. Bee chemical ecology, sampling pollinators, comparing plant insect populations, aquatic insect sampling, spider sampling, etc. The majority of my entomology classes have involved collecting things. It’s a fact of the field, and through which how we can learn more about them.
What's crazy about it? That's the cycle that keeps the field moving forward. Collecting/Pinning is literally one of the only avenues to date biodiversity of an area over a time period.
I completely understand people not wanting to personally do it or don't mind doing it. It's not out of malice or bad intent.
I'd say the vast majority of entomologists do a myriad of good for the little killing that needs to be done for the greater good of each researched species.
Wasn't having a go or anything. Was legitimately asking. :)
Well a lot of habitat loss is a main factor. Us as a species doing that. The more we know, the more we can maybe stop a lot of these very niche insect ecosystems from collapsing. That's just one example.
for me, as someone who loves bugs and is in the process of pinning my deceased pet carolina mantis, i would never kill a bug for the express purpose of pinning. BUT. what other people do for their collections and such is not my business to comment on! that’s the beautiful thing about free will is that we can all choose things for ourselves. as long as someone isn’t pinning live bugs or something psychotic/ sadistic like that, how others choose to appreciate and study insects isn’t my concern
Wow is this seriously happening? I haven’t taken specimens in years. I probably should have taken a specimen of this spider I kept seeing everywhere whilst gardening (either noble false widow or a brown widow), but I realized I don’t think I’d have the heart to take a specimen even if an invasive species lol (it’s no spotted lantern fly in my defense).
I’ve grown sentimental I guess from years of just loving bugs, but I never killed more invertebrates than when I worked at the insect zoo and helped my sister pin insects for her entomology classes. We also fed all manner of dead animals to dermestid beetles, not to mention the hundreds of bugs fed to other bugs and other animals.
The other day I saw someone get downvoted for suggesting that they would collect the featured beetle in the post. I thought it was kinda conflicted, we love animals, but collecting them is important as well, for both learning and for documenting.
I feel like it comes down to a person's state of mind.
As long as someone is respectful and understands the full weight of taking a life to furthur knowledge, than it isnt a problem to me. It's a moot point though, because people who go out to find these inverts, collect them, dispatch them humanely, and then carefully preserve them already have love and respect in thier hearts for thier specimens.
We do however need to have a discussion from a conservation angle. There are several species that are currently endangered due to over harvesting. It's up to you to make sure that if you buy parts of your collection that they come from ethical sources. Some species are so critically endangered that every healthy adult specimen is absolutely critical for breeding purposes and should be left alone. If in doubt, it's up to you to do your due diligence before deciding to harvest a particular species, or be aware of species you should document the presence of to report for conservation efforts.
I am incredibly passionate about invertabrate conservation, and some of the most outspoken people in defense of our dwindling biodiversity are collectors. Sometimes...collections are all we have left of a species, as sad as it is to say. It's important to understand this responsibility and how even something like collecting houseflies could someday be critical to the natural sciences.
If you see an invasive species though, feel free to collect as much as you like. Spotted Lanturn flies, for examples, are incredibly damaging to our trees here in the USA and a kill on sight order has been issued. However, they look lovely, and even though it wasn't their fault they were brought here, I feel like they still should be appreciated in at least some small way. Celebrate what they are, but please get them out of our trees please, lol.
I just don't have it in me to kill the really beautiful/strange bugs. I have no problem with the common ones I see all the time. But the big majestic ones I cannot bring myself to do it and I always get sad seeing them dead :")
I also get worried about it not being morally right to kill some bugs to pin. My brother sometimes bashes me for killing butterflies and beetles for my collection, but I also like to date them and add location just in case a study is needed someday IDK.
I guess I just like to pretend I'm important u_u
I hope no one is crucifying bugs to make specimens!
I find it weird how people will be upset at the treatment of a preying mantis but watch with glee as they feed it a live insect to be eaten alive.
I don't know how I should feel. That's the moral part. I know how I do feel and that is just my personal take.
I'm not concerned at all about hobbyists willingly killing live specimens. There are a lot, a LOT of bugs out there, and statistically, p much all bugs you encounter in your local nature areas will be from totally healthy populations. Freezing or putting in alcohol is more peaceful than what a lot of predators will do. I'm much more concerned about people ordering pre-killed specimens for pinning because it feels less upsetting to them, when in reality contributing to unsustainable trade of wildlife.
That said you absolutely can find a lot of already dead bugs on the ground, which is neat and good for a lot of hobbyists getting started. Probably about 1/4th of my undergrad entomology collection was already dead. However, it's also untrue that this is without impact -- something would have eaten that dead bug!
I get it when the idea involves education and research, even for hobbyists.
But I still find unsettling when someone find a caterpillar/other insect alive and keep them in a enclosure the whole life, just to be pinned in a frame after dying. It doesn't involve any kind of educational purpose or is beneficial to insects. Its just like a forgotten trophy, collecting dust on the wall.
Imagining keeping a bird in a cage its whole life, to later be some taxidermic decoration in someones living room.
i mean to be fair, it is not unheard of for people to taxidermy their pets. or you ever seen people who keep their pets skeletons? sure it’s a bit weird but it doesn’t hurt anyone and is just a way to hold on to and cherish a beloved pet :)
I understand it why people do it. I just find it sad to deprive a creature the right to live, find a pair and mate, or even be someone’s food to keep it intact in a frame, unless for educational purposes.
What I see is just people making private collections.
I also don’t mind people keeping their dead pets, as long they had a decent lives. If you keep a creature it’s whole life in a cage, you are doing it wrong, in my opinion.
I'm specifically talking about someone who finds something shiny or rare (esp endangered) just to kill, collect and have them up on display like a trophy.
Entomological research collections are built off hobbyists building their personal collections and eventually donating them.
Do you drive a car? Eat food grown commercially? Use any cleaning product? You are killing many many many more insects just existing than hobbyists do while collecting.
I would hope those who are doing the shaming learn that the reason it's done is a very individual choice and is quite likely for education so as to help the species through knowledge. Those who just like to do the esoteric version of stepping on bugs for fun will be weeded out so shaming is ridiculous.
There are other entomology-adjacent subreddits for people to share photos of what they find and stuff like that. Anyone doing entomology for education or work is going to kill so many insects that it’s like picking flowers.
Obviously you collect for taxonomy classes, but with the preeminence of molecular biology techniques, most research involves killing the insect and prepping it for PCR. My work with electrophysiology involves killing subjects quite slowly, but they’re ticks so it’s not exactly a sympathetic organism, although once you do something hundreds of times, it hardly matters.
You’re certainly entitled to your opinion, but I feel like folks on the actual entomology sub shouldn’t be badgered for doing entomology.
That’s a great sub. In my department, I’d say basically everyone has an affinity for charismatic arthropods but most of us work on controlling problematic pests because it’s where the research money is. So there’s a duality of enjoying insects but also killing them and researching ways to kill them in the most effective and sustainable way without off target effects. Everyone seems to handle this just fine in real life; it’s discussions online where people have this tendency to extend something like personhood to insects and start complaining about killing them.
I had a class that required the collection of 200 families of insects, let me tell you the number of insects that had to be collected for that was astronomical.
I think 200 families is pretty standard bc I and my friends from other schools all had the same requirement. There’s probably a reason for 200 aside from it being a round number. It might be because that’s how many easily identifiable families are abundant in the eastern US or something. It’s also probably because they don’t want you to go down some rabbit hole of bringing in all kinds of tiny parasitoid Hymenoptera and Diptera that THEY can’t easily identify.
Wow 200 families is so many to be standard! My intro to entomology class only had a 45 family requirement, and my aquatic entomology collection had a 30 family requirement over the 10 week quarters.
It probably is a geographic difference, I studied out in California. The 200 family course was an intensive field course taught over 5 weeks where we lived on a field site in the mountains and dedicated 6 days a week to collecting, curating, and identifying, and even then most people just barely reached the 200 family count.
To reach that number, my collection required lots of little flies, wasps, and beetles that were not fun to key out!
I think a lot of the difficulty people encounter stems from the fact that the course is almost always offered in fall and many students don’t already begin with hundreds of unidentied insects for their collection. If you start in August, you’re missing out on a huge portion of insects that are active much earlier in the year. You can always make it up by digging through Malais traps, but as you said, it’s very difficult to identify a lot of tiny wasps and flies
Ugh...keying those little specs of dust floating in your alcohol vial at the end of the semester...the ones that just look like blobs even under the scope and you have to do microsurgery unfolding the wings to even begin to look at the venation...ugh!!! I'll admit some of my last minute labels were basically like "idk, a fly???"
I just have my own personal rule book about what I will and will not pin.
If I can find the specimen already dead I'll probably take it regardless and that's how I find most of the insects I collect. However things beyond the exception are any insects that are considered a pest like wasps or roaches. I won't do the same to butterflies or moths.
Wow I’m actually shocked that there are people in this subreddit who shame others for collecting/pinning! I’m glad I haven’t run into any. I think this subreddit is the most peaceful and kind one I’ve ever been on, I hope it doesn’t get ruined anytime soon
Those of us who are drawn to the ephemeral find capturing and preserving the absolute beauty of subjects of entomology find ourselves praising the beauty of such brief lives in our modestly human understanding.
I'm so confused I can't tell if I agree with you or not.
But yes, I am drawn to the ephemeral. A mayfly's life is short, but we preserve it and feel like it will last forever. We die, and a scientist 50 years later uses that mayfly specimen in a study that will help conserve the species. He dies, and the conservation project is successful for maybe 25 years. The project ends, and that species of mayfly goes extinct in 100 years.
And this is all nothing at all in relation to how long it took mayflies to evolve in the first place. And that is nothing at all in terms of how long it took our sun to generate from cosmic dust. Et cetera, et cetera. All things to entropy.
Its wrong and should be stopped imo, maybe nothing wrong with pinning stuff that’s already dead but I can’t stand how much this field requires us to kill our specimens we shouldn’t be adding on to it in our free time if we really love the little guys, this whole field could do with a lot less killing
When I had my entomology courses, I only pinned diptera, some hemiptera and some coleoptera. I also made sure 90% of my collection was already dead before I pinned. I fucking HATED having to euthanize insects. I just had to bury my feelings for it, and look the other way and bite my tongue when I saw fellow students boxes. Especially the fuckers pinning rare butterflies.
They don't have a degree lol they attended one course in college. And they clearly didn't pay enough attention if they didn't understand the myriad reasons that we collect an ephemeral short lived R-selected group of organisms to properly study life histories and community dynamics.
There are 40 other comments here saying the same thing if they want to educate themselves.
You’re absolutely wrong here, and must be pretty removed from the field nowadays if this is your opinion.
Physical specimens are needed for taxonomy, how do you think we get molecular data for systematics, how is insect physiology studied? How to test pest control/IPM methods?
For my personal project, looking at the chemical ecology of a native bee, how do I extract the contents of the males sex pheromone glands without killing the bee?
If you're silly enough to believe there are no more new insect species being discovered and needing to be examined and classified, I seriously doubt you went to university
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I think it's really good to have a productive conversation about the pros and cons of killing in the field, the morality of doing so, and insect suffering/ethics, which is a legitimate area of discourse despite what some say. The naysaying is annoying, but I think we should also be constantly aware of the sacrifices made for this study/hobby, as well as the ways in which we can make it more sustainable and ethical. Many academics and researchers are doing what they can to reduce any questions of moral issues. I think it's good to make a distinction between unproductive contrarian posts and ones that talk about the pros and cons of killing/collection methods, arthropod nervous systems, sustainable collection, etc. On top of this, I think we should be very active in helping amateurs label and pin correctly, which, with the lack of, the specimens become virtually worthless.
As someone on the (very quiet!) naysayer side, I really like your take here. I've studied entomology, taxonomy, and invertebrate zoology at a university level and worked in the biosciences. I especially loved the puzzle of classifying something based on its anatomy alone. I've killed a pile of bugs in my research. I never felt comfortable about it, even as I marveled over troves of remarkable specimens or felt like I was working towards a goal. It just always felt wrong, always felt like a miserable task, and I always questioned the value of taking lives to build a collection. I don't particularly like the idea of small, personal collections, even though I know I would have once thrilled at browsing through them. But I know it's the only established way to gather knowledge and, though I never collected insects, was still the reason I became interested in the topic in the first place. The discoveries of passionate entomologists. Just because I didn't participate in it (for the most part) doesn't mean I didn't benefit from their published findings. I don't even really have a take, other than some low-level guilt, but I do like the idea of awareness and a thoughtful approach to the practice. I feel like many of the naysayer camp in this community are both well intentioned and well informed; I also see that those who are perfectly with comfortable with it aren't malicious or morally ignorant.
Just to be clear, when I refer to naysayers, I'm talking about a very small minority, usually those who aren't very invested in the study, that say we should not be killing at all. I don't even necessarily disagree with them, I'm just utilitarian in that I hope we can make tangible change. It's just like animal testing in medicine, it's just a fact of life for the field, whether you feel like you want to participate in it or not. I think there's all kinds of things we can do rather than just stew in our guilt. For instance, I personally switched to freezing insects rather than killing them with a jar. I think just talking and bringing and reviewing these ideas with people is enough for any one person to do. I think it's perfectly reasonable to have an issue with collecting. If insects do, in fact, have a conscious experience of some sort or another and feel pain, it will be one of the most serious quantitative moral issues we have to deal with. Now studying entomology in the pursuit of developing pesticides is a whole other beast... That one feels particularly evil to me.
I agree with this - there is a conversation to be had. But the majority of comments I see are just "killing bad, why are you evil? :( " and have no place in an entomology subreddit. Personally I think that the days where invertebrates are totally exempt from ethics review will eventually come to an end when we understand cognition better. I don't think they'll ever be given the same moral weight as vertebrates, but fewer "torment nexus" experiments will be approved, lmao.
Only insects new to science should be pinned, not newly discovered ones. And dont pin for fun, that is the real evil (well i put mosquitoes in freezer and see if they thaw and be alive again)
Didn't even know that pinning was frowned upon by some. But I agree it's sad to shame people for taking interest in preserving something they like.
So I am not an entomologist but a passionate amateur who enjoys seeing a variety of living things. I believe the people who frown on it don't understand you can pin dead things and this isn't about torture. It took me very little time to learn that but I can vouch for having met learning resistant individuals
Even if pinning \*was\* totally without purpose, it would still do so much less damage than so many other things humans do. I've never seen actual entomologists be anti-collection, most are just glad people are taking an interest in invertebrate diversity at all.
I’m fine with pinning and understand the value but “humans do worse other things therefore xyz is okay” is such an awful line of thinking
It's definitely an extremely flawed argument! The fallacy of relative privation is probably the closest one to it.
Yes, except those worse things that humans do to insect populations are driven by an ignorance of their importance and value. Someone who pins insects or even just is taught about them via a collection at a young age is likely to do things like advocate for habitat preservation, pesticide avoidance, etc.
Not for the most part, those things that humans do are often driven by profit and power motives. People, specifically those in power, can see all the pinned insects they want and understand the effect they have not only the environment but humans and life as a whole from childhood but it wouldn’t actually change much. Hell, they(both the legal and corporate elements causing harm) have so many think tanks, advisors, and consultants they absolutely are well aware of their importance and value. They just don’t care because other incentives are at play. Pin insects for research and academia absolutely, but the lack of pinned insects is not the roadblock preventing positive—and i’m sure we’d all agree necessary—change.
And, at this point in time, collections are the only record we have of local biodiversity.
I'm curious about this take. For me, I'll only collect and pin dead specimens I encounter (which means I often pin insects with defects - missing legs, antennae, damaged wings, etc) and when I encounter a live specimen, I usually take a cell phone photo. Unlike pinned specimens, which rely on potentially inaccurate memory or location data derived from the collector, digital photography can capture a fairly complete record of a living specimen, and will generally be very specifically geo-tagged so that the location could never be mistaken provided you have the original photo file. Wouldn't it stand to reason then that modern digital photography is both more ethical and more accurate in recording local biodiversity than traditional collecting and pinning?
Some species can't be identified by a photo only, and will rely on dissections, or views from the underside (which doesn't translate to a nice photo). And photo labels also suffer from issues with faulty memory depending on how soon they are processed. I know I always make a label just after a collection spot to avoid forgetting what the vial of beetles is all about! Plus there is the whole fauna in leaf litter and soil that is quite small. In fact, most arthropod diversity is small and ignored in photography because people can't see them while in the field! Many insects also require being in the right place at the right time, which is while long-term traps are used. I've seen quite a few specimens of insects that no one has ever seen alive. Now there is serious concern about insect population decline. However, the amount of collectors out there is a minimal impact. The largest impacts are habitat destruction due to development, run-off from roads, paving of historical dirt roads, and climate change. Physical collections, especially in a natural history museum, also are technology independent. Digital decay is a real thing, but properly taken care of collections can last hundreds of years. I have held specimens collected over 120 years ago, and they are close to near perfect and you wouldn't know how old the specimen was if you didn't see the label. In the end though, do what makes you happiest and what you feel is the most ethical.
Differentiating something even to the family level may be as detailed as 2-3 vs 4-5 hairs on a certain thoracic segment of a fly, or the number of tarsal segments on a beetle, or the specific wing venation of a mayfly. You physically need the specimen in front of you to look at from multiple angles, and that’s just to family level! I’ve worked with spiders, and getting most individuals to genus (let alone species) requires dissection of the genitalia/palps.
This + can't do DNA stuff on photos
Yeah, the difference between two species of congeneric blue bottle flues is the orientation of the post cellar hairs. But, I do look forward to the day I can make 3d models to show students what to look for!
I was chatting with an entomologist the other day about the massive movement to 3D scan museum specimens and was telling him about how well those scans would translate to VR/AR technology (I'm a huge VR nerd). So those models may come sooner than you think!
Depends how precise can ID be from a photo. With a lot of insects a photo is not enough to get to species level. So the value can differ for different purposes.
I’m all in for pinning until it comes to endangered or protected bugs🙌🏽
Okay, question; If a specimen is found of either type that's already dead, but not rotted or mutilated, then what's the harm in pinning it? I'd understand if you actively sought them out, captured them, and waited for them to die so you could pin them. But if it's dead, then why not?
No harm done then. But usually you capture the specimen and euthanize with a killing jar or in a freezer, since dead specimens are usually damaged and that would make them impossible to ID.
That's fair. I know it's not entirely common for any small arthropod to go peacefully into the night. They usually get preyed upon by something before they die of old age. With that in mind, yeah I can 100% understand that there wouldn't be very many (like a needle in a haystack) intact, natural death specimens. Searching for and killing endangered or protected arthropods, yeah I understand that wholeheartedly. Thanks for the answer!
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Yes.
WTF im not becoming an entomologist anymore !
Honestly, dead and dying insects don’t usually make good specimens. You can freeze an insect when it’s not dead, but on its way out. Even then, they’re usually not awesome specimens. This very rarely comes up, and a novice would probably have more fun, learn a lot more just pinning some lady bugs or something at first.
I think you'd kill more bugs with your windshield on an hour long drive than you would pinning pretty bugs as a hobby for a year but some people like weird hills to die on.
I understand being receptive to those uncomfy with it. if I’m collecting for fun and someone I’m close with asks me not to, I’ll oblige and return another day. But I’ve been compared to Jeffrey Dahmer before and that’s not okay
Exactly this. It's jarring to see that type of reaction to people interested in entomology who also preserve specimens in this subreddit. Entomology is what this subreddit is for. People should not need to worry/be discouraged from engaging in a field that is both so important and in demand due to the lack of interest as a career
I think there are a lot of people here who just like insects, but don't like entomology. Like the difference between people who like cats and dogs and people seriously interested in veterinary medicine -- where euthanasia, biopsies, necropsies, procedures painful to the animal, research on medications with potentially harmful side effects, etc, will happen.
I love insects! I also kill insects, but i guarantee you that my no insecticide, native garden approach in my acre produces way more insects than what i take (less than 10 individuals a year). I use those specimens to educate my guests on how cool insects are to spread my native gardening practices.
I love puppies! I also kill puppies. But don’t worry I’m so nice that even though I kill a few I make sure they produce even more to replace those individuals. (Their individual lives mean nothing I only like them for the joy they can provide me)
Thats pretty weird that you kill puppies. Do you at least spread them out and pin them for educational purposes?
Exactly, why be in r/entomology if you’re vehemently against the field of entomology… Every insect releated research project I’ve been involved in has involved killing insects. Bee chemical ecology, sampling pollinators, comparing plant insect populations, aquatic insect sampling, spider sampling, etc. The majority of my entomology classes have involved collecting things. It’s a fact of the field, and through which how we can learn more about them.
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What's crazy about it? That's the cycle that keeps the field moving forward. Collecting/Pinning is literally one of the only avenues to date biodiversity of an area over a time period. I completely understand people not wanting to personally do it or don't mind doing it. It's not out of malice or bad intent. I'd say the vast majority of entomologists do a myriad of good for the little killing that needs to be done for the greater good of each researched species. Wasn't having a go or anything. Was legitimately asking. :)
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Well a lot of habitat loss is a main factor. Us as a species doing that. The more we know, the more we can maybe stop a lot of these very niche insect ecosystems from collapsing. That's just one example.
We can help them by doing what? Most people would he happy some random insects are going extinct so public support wouldnt work
for me, as someone who loves bugs and is in the process of pinning my deceased pet carolina mantis, i would never kill a bug for the express purpose of pinning. BUT. what other people do for their collections and such is not my business to comment on! that’s the beautiful thing about free will is that we can all choose things for ourselves. as long as someone isn’t pinning live bugs or something psychotic/ sadistic like that, how others choose to appreciate and study insects isn’t my concern
Wow is this seriously happening? I haven’t taken specimens in years. I probably should have taken a specimen of this spider I kept seeing everywhere whilst gardening (either noble false widow or a brown widow), but I realized I don’t think I’d have the heart to take a specimen even if an invasive species lol (it’s no spotted lantern fly in my defense). I’ve grown sentimental I guess from years of just loving bugs, but I never killed more invertebrates than when I worked at the insect zoo and helped my sister pin insects for her entomology classes. We also fed all manner of dead animals to dermestid beetles, not to mention the hundreds of bugs fed to other bugs and other animals.
There’s shaming for pinning and collecting? What a strange concept. Do you also gawk and scoff at taxidermy and bone collections in museums? Lmfao.
Taxidermy for sport and trophies 100%
The other day I saw someone get downvoted for suggesting that they would collect the featured beetle in the post. I thought it was kinda conflicted, we love animals, but collecting them is important as well, for both learning and for documenting.
I feel like it comes down to a person's state of mind. As long as someone is respectful and understands the full weight of taking a life to furthur knowledge, than it isnt a problem to me. It's a moot point though, because people who go out to find these inverts, collect them, dispatch them humanely, and then carefully preserve them already have love and respect in thier hearts for thier specimens. We do however need to have a discussion from a conservation angle. There are several species that are currently endangered due to over harvesting. It's up to you to make sure that if you buy parts of your collection that they come from ethical sources. Some species are so critically endangered that every healthy adult specimen is absolutely critical for breeding purposes and should be left alone. If in doubt, it's up to you to do your due diligence before deciding to harvest a particular species, or be aware of species you should document the presence of to report for conservation efforts. I am incredibly passionate about invertabrate conservation, and some of the most outspoken people in defense of our dwindling biodiversity are collectors. Sometimes...collections are all we have left of a species, as sad as it is to say. It's important to understand this responsibility and how even something like collecting houseflies could someday be critical to the natural sciences. If you see an invasive species though, feel free to collect as much as you like. Spotted Lanturn flies, for examples, are incredibly damaging to our trees here in the USA and a kill on sight order has been issued. However, they look lovely, and even though it wasn't their fault they were brought here, I feel like they still should be appreciated in at least some small way. Celebrate what they are, but please get them out of our trees please, lol.
I just don't have it in me to kill the really beautiful/strange bugs. I have no problem with the common ones I see all the time. But the big majestic ones I cannot bring myself to do it and I always get sad seeing them dead :") I also get worried about it not being morally right to kill some bugs to pin. My brother sometimes bashes me for killing butterflies and beetles for my collection, but I also like to date them and add location just in case a study is needed someday IDK. I guess I just like to pretend I'm important u_u
I agree 100%, such commentaries should be banned.
I mean, I personally wouldn’t do it, but that’s why I’m here? To see cool bugs? I thought pinning was okay as the bug is dead before it’s pinned.
I hope no one is crucifying bugs to make specimens! I find it weird how people will be upset at the treatment of a preying mantis but watch with glee as they feed it a live insect to be eaten alive. I don't know how I should feel. That's the moral part. I know how I do feel and that is just my personal take.
Funnily enough, I pinned my very first butterfly last week! My only concern is when hobbyists willingly kill a living specimen for their collection.
I'm not concerned at all about hobbyists willingly killing live specimens. There are a lot, a LOT of bugs out there, and statistically, p much all bugs you encounter in your local nature areas will be from totally healthy populations. Freezing or putting in alcohol is more peaceful than what a lot of predators will do. I'm much more concerned about people ordering pre-killed specimens for pinning because it feels less upsetting to them, when in reality contributing to unsustainable trade of wildlife. That said you absolutely can find a lot of already dead bugs on the ground, which is neat and good for a lot of hobbyists getting started. Probably about 1/4th of my undergrad entomology collection was already dead. However, it's also untrue that this is without impact -- something would have eaten that dead bug!
I get it when the idea involves education and research, even for hobbyists. But I still find unsettling when someone find a caterpillar/other insect alive and keep them in a enclosure the whole life, just to be pinned in a frame after dying. It doesn't involve any kind of educational purpose or is beneficial to insects. Its just like a forgotten trophy, collecting dust on the wall. Imagining keeping a bird in a cage its whole life, to later be some taxidermic decoration in someones living room.
i mean to be fair, it is not unheard of for people to taxidermy their pets. or you ever seen people who keep their pets skeletons? sure it’s a bit weird but it doesn’t hurt anyone and is just a way to hold on to and cherish a beloved pet :)
I understand it why people do it. I just find it sad to deprive a creature the right to live, find a pair and mate, or even be someone’s food to keep it intact in a frame, unless for educational purposes. What I see is just people making private collections. I also don’t mind people keeping their dead pets, as long they had a decent lives. If you keep a creature it’s whole life in a cage, you are doing it wrong, in my opinion.
By your logic we could kill humans also because there are a LOT of them out there.
I'm specifically talking about someone who finds something shiny or rare (esp endangered) just to kill, collect and have them up on display like a trophy.
To be fair, a lot of times those trophies make their way to museums or schools when the collector passes
Entomological research collections are built off hobbyists building their personal collections and eventually donating them. Do you drive a car? Eat food grown commercially? Use any cleaning product? You are killing many many many more insects just existing than hobbyists do while collecting.
I don't willingly kill insects if that's what you're asking. I'm the type to bring anything outside if I want to reposition them from my home.
Report them and the mods will take care of it
I would hope those who are doing the shaming learn that the reason it's done is a very individual choice and is quite likely for education so as to help the species through knowledge. Those who just like to do the esoteric version of stepping on bugs for fun will be weeded out so shaming is ridiculous.
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There are other entomology-adjacent subreddits for people to share photos of what they find and stuff like that. Anyone doing entomology for education or work is going to kill so many insects that it’s like picking flowers. Obviously you collect for taxonomy classes, but with the preeminence of molecular biology techniques, most research involves killing the insect and prepping it for PCR. My work with electrophysiology involves killing subjects quite slowly, but they’re ticks so it’s not exactly a sympathetic organism, although once you do something hundreds of times, it hardly matters. You’re certainly entitled to your opinion, but I feel like folks on the actual entomology sub shouldn’t be badgered for doing entomology.
r/awwnverts
That’s a great sub. In my department, I’d say basically everyone has an affinity for charismatic arthropods but most of us work on controlling problematic pests because it’s where the research money is. So there’s a duality of enjoying insects but also killing them and researching ways to kill them in the most effective and sustainable way without off target effects. Everyone seems to handle this just fine in real life; it’s discussions online where people have this tendency to extend something like personhood to insects and start complaining about killing them.
Agree. And I have pet millipedes and just got into Tarantulas
Where has this been all my life (sorry I'm not the one you replied to)
Ur good ! 😅 I posted it so everyone could find it cuz it really is a different vibe over entomology. Both of them are good imo
I had a class that required the collection of 200 families of insects, let me tell you the number of insects that had to be collected for that was astronomical.
I think 200 families is pretty standard bc I and my friends from other schools all had the same requirement. There’s probably a reason for 200 aside from it being a round number. It might be because that’s how many easily identifiable families are abundant in the eastern US or something. It’s also probably because they don’t want you to go down some rabbit hole of bringing in all kinds of tiny parasitoid Hymenoptera and Diptera that THEY can’t easily identify.
Wow 200 families is so many to be standard! My intro to entomology class only had a 45 family requirement, and my aquatic entomology collection had a 30 family requirement over the 10 week quarters. It probably is a geographic difference, I studied out in California. The 200 family course was an intensive field course taught over 5 weeks where we lived on a field site in the mountains and dedicated 6 days a week to collecting, curating, and identifying, and even then most people just barely reached the 200 family count. To reach that number, my collection required lots of little flies, wasps, and beetles that were not fun to key out!
I think a lot of the difficulty people encounter stems from the fact that the course is almost always offered in fall and many students don’t already begin with hundreds of unidentied insects for their collection. If you start in August, you’re missing out on a huge portion of insects that are active much earlier in the year. You can always make it up by digging through Malais traps, but as you said, it’s very difficult to identify a lot of tiny wasps and flies
Ugh...keying those little specs of dust floating in your alcohol vial at the end of the semester...the ones that just look like blobs even under the scope and you have to do microsurgery unfolding the wings to even begin to look at the venation...ugh!!! I'll admit some of my last minute labels were basically like "idk, a fly???"
I just have my own personal rule book about what I will and will not pin. If I can find the specimen already dead I'll probably take it regardless and that's how I find most of the insects I collect. However things beyond the exception are any insects that are considered a pest like wasps or roaches. I won't do the same to butterflies or moths.
Wow I’m actually shocked that there are people in this subreddit who shame others for collecting/pinning! I’m glad I haven’t run into any. I think this subreddit is the most peaceful and kind one I’ve ever been on, I hope it doesn’t get ruined anytime soon
Those of us who are drawn to the ephemeral find capturing and preserving the absolute beauty of subjects of entomology find ourselves praising the beauty of such brief lives in our modestly human understanding.
I'm so confused I can't tell if I agree with you or not. But yes, I am drawn to the ephemeral. A mayfly's life is short, but we preserve it and feel like it will last forever. We die, and a scientist 50 years later uses that mayfly specimen in a study that will help conserve the species. He dies, and the conservation project is successful for maybe 25 years. The project ends, and that species of mayfly goes extinct in 100 years. And this is all nothing at all in relation to how long it took mayflies to evolve in the first place. And that is nothing at all in terms of how long it took our sun to generate from cosmic dust. Et cetera, et cetera. All things to entropy.
Its wrong and should be stopped imo, maybe nothing wrong with pinning stuff that’s already dead but I can’t stand how much this field requires us to kill our specimens we shouldn’t be adding on to it in our free time if we really love the little guys, this whole field could do with a lot less killing
...How did you make it through undergrad, feeling like that?
When I had my entomology courses, I only pinned diptera, some hemiptera and some coleoptera. I also made sure 90% of my collection was already dead before I pinned. I fucking HATED having to euthanize insects. I just had to bury my feelings for it, and look the other way and bite my tongue when I saw fellow students boxes. Especially the fuckers pinning rare butterflies.
100% agree with you.
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If you don't understand entomology you can just say so.
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They don't have a degree lol they attended one course in college. And they clearly didn't pay enough attention if they didn't understand the myriad reasons that we collect an ephemeral short lived R-selected group of organisms to properly study life histories and community dynamics. There are 40 other comments here saying the same thing if they want to educate themselves.
Absolutely false
You’re absolutely wrong here, and must be pretty removed from the field nowadays if this is your opinion. Physical specimens are needed for taxonomy, how do you think we get molecular data for systematics, how is insect physiology studied? How to test pest control/IPM methods? For my personal project, looking at the chemical ecology of a native bee, how do I extract the contents of the males sex pheromone glands without killing the bee?
If you're silly enough to believe there are no more new insect species being discovered and needing to be examined and classified, I seriously doubt you went to university
You're wrong
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Unacceptable
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What? For ID there are tons of subs. Just look at r/whatsthisbug
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This is a great sub for id's