3668 insect specimens arrived safely in Denver
On 18 October Jeff Stephenson and Frank Krell drove from Denver
to Helena, Montana, to collect a major donation (only to find out
in the middle of nowhere, Wyoming, that the gas gauge of the Museum
vehicle didn't work). In Helena resides Dr. Bea Vogel, DMNS
Research Associate and first president of the American Arachnological
Society. Her daughter Megan, who passed away on 20 August from
cancer, had donated her insect collection to the DMNS and had
brought it to her mother's house. Bea handed the collection over to
Jeff and Frank, together with all field notes and other documents.
She accompanied Jeff and Frank back to the Museum, where she worked
for a week with David Bettman to complement labels and reassociate
data. The collection contains almost 3700 specimens of Lepidoptera,
Coleoptera and other orders, including regional, Australian and
Mexican material, and even some of the dung beetle specimens of the
seminal studies of Kingston & Coe on dung
beetle ecology of Tsavo, Kenya, that were discarded from the
Oxford Museum because of infestation problems when Megan worked
there. They join the DMNS world scarab collection and will soon be
databased. We are grateful for this generous donation which
contains a wealth of interesting species, and for Bea's invaluable
help making sure that no information got lost.
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