Thread subject: Diptera.info :: Storing flies in alcohol

Posted by Andre on 02-01-2008 12:58
#52

Chris Raper wrote:
We were moving around the country too much to allow me to pin specimens each evening and the humidity out there would have prevented them drying anyway. So, alcohol was a good killing agent and it helped preserve & protect the specimens and store them in a relatively small space. :) But most of the resulting specimens were very hard to set because they had contracted all their muscles.

Chris R.


Contracting muscles is exactly the reason why, whenever I store caught insects in alcohol (when travelling indeed, for instance when there's no place for boxes in my luggage), I always kill them with ethyl-acetate (forgot the english word for it) first and let them get a little 'soft'. Admitted, it's more timeconsuming than dropping them in the ethanol directly and you need extra tubes/bottles and administration not to mix up the data.
Also, back home, I try to pin them asap. The longer in ethanol, the more bodily fluids are exchanged with the ethanol, the more loss of color and sometimes of structure.
My experience covers Syrphidae mostly, I must add ;)