Beetlemania

From the desk of Kelly Sendall, 
Manager of Natural History
Royal BC Museum

The practice of preparing specimens for a museum's reference collection is by and large standard the world over. Chances are that a flying squirrel specimen collected for the museum in Paraguay would be prepared in the same way a flying squirrel specimen is prepared here at the Royal BC Museum. Most natural history museums, at least those large enough to have a preparator, will have a living colony of scavengers. I'm talking about beetle colonies maintained to help clean and prepare skeletons of birds and mammals. These are dermestid beetles, sometimes referred to as carpet or larder beetles, and are commonly found in the wild in most parts of the world. Those used most often by museums belong to the species Dermestes maculatus (right)

One of two cabinets at the museum
containing one colony each.

The beetle colonies are kept in a secure and beetle-tight room so that there is little chance any escapees can make their way back into the museum collection. This is important as the "untrained" beetles will indiscriminately munch away on a variety of natural materials not intended for them, therefore,  the door to the room containing the colonies and the cabinets themselves are sealed from the exterior with plastic pipe or ribbon gaskets.

A colony busy munching on a raptor skeleton
for the reference collection.
Ribs and breastbone are visible in the upper right
of the picture.

The beetles are very thorough at cleaning all muscle and connective tissue from carcasses and, for that reason, very important in helping out with museum specimen preparation. Although colonies can be started from wild caught beetles they may be carrying uninvited guests such as mites which compromise their ability to survive. Colonies may also be purchased.  The museum is fortunate to be able to share efforts with the University of Victoria in keeping colonies viable between the two institutions.

Here are 18 bats just dropped off for a
beetle cleaning. After a couple of weeks
these will be 18 beautifully cleaned skeletons.

Some prepared skeletons of
northern flying squirrels (Glaucomys sabrinus)
ready for the collection.

The fine details of the bones are now visible
with virtually no damage to even
the tiniest of bones.

Being able to examine the fine details and accurately measure features or lengths of bones is often very important in identifying smaller species of mammals. The single bone in the small vial (pictured below) is only about 5mm long.

baculum from specimen of Glaucomys sabrinus

Once all the beetle work is done the skeleton
is reunited with the rest of the specimen
in the reference collection.

If you would like to read more about these beetles as preparators in natural history museums please see:

Use of Dermestid Beetles for skeleton preparation

Busy Beetles

Natural History Hodgepodge

From the desk of Kelly Sendall,
Manager of Natural History,
Royal BC Museum

Every now and again I am asked to give examples of what’s in the natural history collections at the museum. Sometimes it’s during conversation here or there and sometimes to a group or at a meeting. If I have a chance to think about good examples for a meeting, I consult the experts – all the staff in the Natural History Section. As a result, I always end up learning something about the collections, the natural history of BC or the history of our province. Each time I assemble a smattering of specimens for a show and tell, I am impressed with the scope and breadth of the museum’s collections. Each specimen and associated record (and there are over 750,000 of them in the natural history collections) represents a snapshot in time and place when that species was present, along with all the conditions you can think of relating to the habitat, the year, the season, the weather, yada, yada, yada. So it’s not just the variety or diversity of life in BC that’s fascinating. It can also be the historical context, or something about the collector, or what the environmental conditions were at the time. Each record is rich with context and each specimen is a biological library of information relating the specimen to the environment or its habitat. So for your enjoyment and, I hope, enlightenment, here are a set of assembled examples I used recently.

BIRD: Lesser Yellowlegs (Tringa flavipes) Collected: 1899 by A.C. Brooks

From Sumas Lake and representing a specimen from a place that no-longer exists as it once was. Sumas Lake (see image above) was drained by way of the Vedder Canal starting in 1924 to make way for farmland.Sumas Lake was a seasonal lake which varied in size depending on the degree of run off. The freshet each year would often fill the lake to cover an area of 120km2 from the average low water coverage of 40km2. Over time the lake was completely drained to marshland and was full of resident and migratory birds.

Tringa flavipes

This specimen shows the real value of museum specimens to document history and change to the biology/ecology of BC – changes which will continue and accelerate given the growing human population.

















FROG: Coastal Tailed Frog (Ascaphus truei) Collected: 1965 in Washington State.

This species of frog is only found in the Pacific Northwest of Washington State and Pacific Southwest of BC. In fact the only population of the species in Canada is here in BC. The ‘tail’ of the male frog is an aid to improve the fertilization of eggs, which are laid in fast-flowing water. The tadpoles have sucker-like mouths to help them stay in one spot underwater

Ascaphus truei

The RBCM collection includes a paratype specimen for the subspecies, Ascaphus truei montanus which is a species all by itself now (Ascaphus montanus)










INVERTEBRATE: Soft Sea Urchin (Sperosoma biseriatum) Collected: 2002 by RBCM and Dept. of Fisheries and Oceans researchers off Graham Island (from 1722-2083 meters of water!)

Sperosoma biseriatum

This species of sea urchin belongs to a strange group of other urchins called ‘soft sea urchins’. Although many species have venomous spines I’m not sure if this one, which typically occurs in the Bering Sea, does. Another species (S. giganteum) in this genus is reputed to be the largest in the world with the test in some specimens measured at 32cm across.





MAMMAL: Eastern Red Bat (Lasiurus borealis) Collected: March 2010 from Bear Mtn. Dawson Creek, BC. by a private biological consulting company monitoring the site for bat mortalities.

This specimen is one of two donated to the RBCM as frozen voucher specimens at the end of May this year. They are wind farm mortalities from the new Bear Mountain site near Dawson Creek.

Lasiurus borealis

At the time they were found in August 2010 they were thought to be the first record of the Eastern Red Bat for BC. Subsequent DNA research on behalf of the Ministry of Environment into the identification of the only other known Red Bat specimen from BC, a specimen collected in 1906 in the Skagit Valley and held by the Canadian Museum Of Nature, proved that it was also an Eastern Red Bat and thus the first record for the province. It had been previously identified as a Western Red Bat (Lasiurus blossevillii) in the RBCM handbook series. This DNA identification and the new record of the Eastern Red Bat will be published by the researcher involved. This specimen was prepared as a study skin and the skull and skeleton will go to the museum’s beetle colony for cleaning prior to being added to the mammal research collection. The second specimen was badly damaged by the wind turbine blade so it will be preserved whole in alcohol. Tissue and hair samples were taken and these will be sent to a PhD student at the University of Calgary who is studying the migration of forest bats. The timing of the bat kill suggests that the bats were migrating. The tissues will be used for microsatellite DNA analysis which will help identify the population or geographic region where the bats originated. The hair will be used for stable isotope analysis which will indicate what the bats were eating and help indicate what area the bats were from. Red Bats are considered to be rare in Western Canada but recent research has extended their range as far north as Nahanni National Park in the NWT. Studies of bat kills at wind farm sites in the eastern US indicate that the Eastern Red Bat may constitute up to 60% of the total mortalities. There is work going on currently to determine why they are so susceptible and preliminary video findings show that this species is attracted to the turbine blades for some reason. The provincial Ministry of Environment is planning to follow up on this new distribution record by doing some survey work in the Okanagan region to try and confirm earlier acoustic records which were interpreted as being Red Bats.

FOSSIL: Anomalocaris

Known now to be the largest Burgess Shale invertebrate animal that reached lengths of 50cm, it didn’t start out that way when first discovered late in the 19th century. Appendages adorning the head of the beast were originally thought to be whole animals themselves. Easy to see from the image (left). Much later a fossil representing the entire body was discovered, from collections at another museum I might add, and the real truth was known as to its appearance and very large size. It must have been an impressive predator in the Cambrian oceans.

Fossilized frontal appendage of Anomalocaris

FISH: Yellow Bullhead (Ameiurus natalis) Collected: July 2005 from Silvermere Lake

The Yellow Bullhead, a species of Bullhead catfish, is a voracious scavenger typically feeding at night on a variety of plant and animal material, both live and dead, including small fish, crayfish, insects, snails and worms. They can grow to half a meter in length weighing close to a kilogram. On average they live for up to seven years. Normally ranging throughout the central and eastern US from central Texas north into North Dakota and north to the Great Lakes region, this specimen is the first for BC and is from Silvermere Lake northeast of Langley, BC.

Ameiurus natalis

It was only when our curator examined the sample more carefully than the researchers who had originally collected them that that the sample was found to contain examples of the Yellow Bullhead. Nobody knew they were here in BC and seemingly well-established on the lower mainland. Their arrival was likely as a contaminant in a shipment of bass.













INSECT: Black Witch Moths (Ascalapha odorata) Collected: Early 20th century from southern Okanagan and Victoria.


These moths are about 15cm across and were at one time more commonly found in BC than they are today. Six of the eleven specimens in the group shown here were collected from Victoria. Distributed from Brazil to the southern US, in spring this moth undertakes a northward migration. During this time adults occasionally reach as far north as BC. Its name reflects the cultural belief in Mexican and Caribbean folklore that it is a harbinger of death.

Ascalapha odorata

So there you have the short story on 7 out of 750,000 records from the Natural History Collections. Stay tuned because we're adding at least a few thousand stories a year to the collection and I may pipe up again about a few more.

One Year Later

From the desk of Kim Gough, Program Developer at the Royal BC Museum



As I was sitting down to write my blog for this month I realized that I have now been blogging for one year! So I treated myself to some cake and gifts and then, drunk on sugar, I decided to revisit my first post on "Backstage Pass Tours" and give an update.

Here is a quick summary of a typcial Backstage Pass tour. Visitors purchase their museum admission ticket or show their current membership card and then sign up for the tour at the Information Desk. There they receive a backstage pass ticket. They then gather in the lobby and are greeted by their tour leader and assistant. After a brief introduction to the museum they head to the freight elevator and take a trip down to the basement.

Frieght elevator


They learn about the field work of the entomology (insect) department and then stop for a look in the Exhibit Art workshop where they see how things are made.

After that they trek through the tunnel and head up the staff elevator to the sixth floor of the collections tower. They go through the entomology library, past the curator's office and into the laboratory where they see stacks of collection drawers, pinned specimens and maybe even some research associates at work. A quick look out the windows at the amazing view of Victoria's inner harbour and then back downstairs.

A glimpse behind the scenes of Entomology

Our docent tour guides do an amazing job. After training sessions and tours with curators and many practice runs they expertly guide our visitors through the many hallways and collections. On weekdays, visitors are often treated to impromptu visits with curators, research associates, conservators and other staff. Some visitors are downright "star struck" and these interactions are definitely a highlight.

A tour visiting the Exhibit Arts workshop and chatting with staff

We have been running the tours for seven months and took a two month break so the departments could have their spaces back for a little while. We also took advantage of this time to evaluate the program and make some changes - including a new tour of the Exhibit Art workshop and of paleontology.

Backstage Pass Tours will continue to be offered with regular admission twice a week until the end of September as part of our Behind the Scenes exhibition - and hopefully beyond. Find out when they happen by visiting our "What's On" page.

The "Eyes" Have It

From the desk of Kim Gough, Program Developer at the Royal BC Museum




It shouldn’t surprise anyone that one of the most popular areas for photographs and conversations in our feature gallery Behind The Scenes: Part 1 Natural History, seems to be the mammal area. Whether it is a photograph, painting or taxidermy mount, people like faces and eyes.

I mention eyes because we have had a lot of feedback from our visitors about our ornithology area of the exhibition. We have over 39,000 birds in the form of study skins in the collection and roughly 200 birds in the display, but the majority of these birds don’t have eyes and they are lying on their backs. Here are just a few of our visitor’s reactions:

- “Please put the birds standing up. My daughter was sad. It was ugly and disgusting.”

- “I feel that the large glass case displaying dozens of birds was inappropriate. They should be properly displayed not lying on their backs in rows, but standing up majestically.”

- “The lying of dead birds is not fun to see, stand them up with eyes open!”

One of the objectives of the Behind the Scenes exhibition was to show people our collections, as they are in the museum. Birds in our collection are stored on their back because they take up less space than taxidermic mounts posed in lifelike positions. Storing the skins on their backs puts the least amount of stress on the specimen and allows for their identifying characteristics to be seen without having to handle them. As a result, some of our specimens have been in the collection for over 100 years.


No one has complained specifically about the “dead spiders” or the “dead sea stars” or the “dead fish” but bird watching is a very popular hobby and people love the colourful and charismatic creatures.

I wonder if the reaction to the birds would be less severe if the study skins had eyes. What do you think?

Imagine

From the desk of Kim Gough, Program Developer,Royal BC Museum

Imagine all of the amazing things behind the doors of a museum. Did you ever imagine that the Royal BC Museum would have John Lennon’s 1965 “Yellow Submarine” Rolls-Royce?

In 1966 the rear seat was modified to convert to a double bed. Telephone, portable refrigerator, Sony television and custom interior-exterior sound system were installed, with loud hailer in nearside front wing.

How did we get such an item you must be asking? In 1986, Jim Pattison was the chairman for Expo ’86 and arranged for the Rolls-Royce to be loaned for the exhibition from Ripley’s Believe it or Not where it was on display as “the most expensive car in the world”. Later that year, the title for the car was transferred to Jim Pattison Industries and he donated the car to the Royal BC Museum.

The car was designed and painted by Steve Weaver of Chertsey, England in 1967.
Rarely used by the Lennons in the USA, the car was loaned to several other rock groups for special occasions.

For many years the car was exhibited in the British Columbia Transportation Museum at Cloverdale, near Vancouver. When they closed in 1993 the “Yellow Submarine” then came to Victoria. Since that time, the car has been displayed on occasion in our lobby, but it can’t stay there permanently and is currently safe in storage.

The majority of our collections are in storage both onsite and at facilities around the city. The Royal British Columbia Museum collection includes over 10 million objects and specimens and millions of significant government documents and records and archival material. Our exhibitions and galleries are only able to show a small fraction of the collection and the research that goes on here.

It was for that reason that we opened our current feature exhibition, Behind the Scenes: Part 1 Natural History. We wanted an opportunity to show you some of the things that aren’t normally displayed. It’s also why we have been doing our Backstage Pass Tours that take visitors behind the scenes and into our Natural History collection areas. You won’t see the Rolls-Royce but you might just see something else as wild and wonderful! Imagine what you might discover.

Drawing Conclusions

From the desk of Kim Gough, Program Developer at the Royal BC Museum

What is that expression – “a stitch in time saves nine”? With that in mind, we tested kid’s interactives for Behind the Scenes back in May. During that time I had put out a different specimen in a case everyday and invited kids to draw or write about it. As I suspected, a fair number of kids participated in the activity and proudly posted their pictures.

When we installed the activity in the AmusEum – the children’s gallery in the Behind the Scenes exhibition – instead of inviting kids to draw an actual specimen, we installed a light board and a stack of laminated images for them to trace. Enthusiasm for this activity went through the roof! More magnets had to be made for the kids to post their pictures and I was off to the printer to get more templates copied.



Is it the lure of the light board that attracts them? Is it the act of tracing vs. drawing? Or is it the opportunity to hang their picture in the museum gallery? It is also interesting to look at the images they are copying and to see what is popular. Kids can choose from fish, fossils, reptiles, amphibians, invertebrates, mammals, insects and flowers. The most popular so far? Scroll down to see…

…you might be surprised.

Invertebrates! Shells to be exact. I know, weird huh? A close second is mammals – the bear in particular, and in third place reptiles – especially turtles and snakes.



I am very pleased with the activity, not just because of the high volume but because kids are slowing down and looking more closely. And because they have the option of tracing or drawing, everybody can do it!

Inside the Cocoon

From the desk of Tim Willis, Director of Exhibitions and Visitor Experience

For the past year, we’ve been exploring how to present behind-the-scenes curatorial work to visitors – but there is one museum in the world that has committed to doing this in a big way – the Natural History Museum in London.

And so, on a recent expedition to visit relatives in the land of my birth, I finally visited a museum project that I’ve been promoting [I’m sure I’ve become quite a bore] – the new Darwin Centre at London’s Natural History Museum.

I had been impressed by the first phase of the Darwin Centre – a kind of public atrium in their fluid collection storage and research building. But the next phase takes this concept to a new level.

I love what the Natural History Museum does. I think they exemplify how to ‘live your brand.’ Essentially, everything they do reinforces the message that they are a museum engaged in science and scientific issues that are important to the world today. A recent BBC reality television documentary series about the museum is aptly named ‘the Museum of Life’ [see links below].

The ‘Cocoon’ in its glass box.

And the Darwin Centre itself is the brand ‘writ large.’ Imagine a giant cocoon inside a glass box. ‘The Cocoon’ contains the museum’s botany and entomology collections – 30 million specimens! It has a thin outer layer. Visitors enter the structure at the top and travel gradually downward inside this outer layer – looking into the collections which are sealed in the core [the collections storage ‘specs’ are impressive: 3.5 kilometers of shelving and cabinets all contained at a constant 18C and 45%RH].

Inside the ‘Cocoon’.

The path downward is an interpretation journey – not of specific collections – but about the curatorial process. What are collections? How are they organized and stored? How are they used, what do scientists study and how do they go about it – and why should we care?

It’s not for everyone… it is quiet and thoughtful – a marked contrast to the mayhem in the dinosaur gallery close by. But I found the experience profoundly moving. For years, I’ve felt that the efforts we [museums in general] have made to explain what collections and curators do to be rather sad affairs. The window into the lab with empty worktables and microscopes say to me ‘this work is boring and everyone is out.’

At the Darwin Centre, the Natural History Museum is quite clearly very serious about revealing what they do and inviting visitors to share their scientific curiosity. The ‘Cocoon’ journey is beautifully paced. As you spiral down, bright pools of light tell you that another element of the story is about to be told. My favourite was the invitation to plan a trip into the field. A curator guides you as you interact with images projected onto a table – like your choice of clothes for the trip. You choose your destination [why did I choose Scotland rather than the Bahamas?], make travel arrangements, and pack your clothes and equipment. At the end of all your planning, the curator appears and admonishes you gently about what you missed.









I’m about to select my clothes for an expedition to Scotland.

The interpretive media are impressive. The Darwin Centre uses a lot of video. Four prominent staff scientists are featured and become your familiar hosts as you make the journey. There are views outside the ‘Cocoon’ into working research labs. They are impressive in the clinical technological way… but not particularly interesting. It’s the people and their work that captures one’s attention.















Views into static collection areas are animated by video projections.

One can argue about what works and what does not in the Darwin Centre, but what really impresses me most is the Natural History Museum’s determination to expose what they do behind the scenes and show its relevance to the world around them.

Tim Willis



Links:

http://www.nhm.ac.uk/visit-us/galleries/orange-zone/darwin-centre/index.html

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00rp1w0

Who Goes There? How to Get Visitors Behind the Scenes

Recent visitors, Fans and members may already know about our plans for the upcoming exhibition Royal BC Museum: Behind the Scenes opening on June 25, 2010. While the curators have been busy selecting artifacts and writing labels we, in the Learning and the Visitor Experience department, have been planning the public programs and thinking about how to actually get you behind the scenes.

Despite being an avid museum visitor myself, I have not encountered many behind the scenes opportunities. The times I have, it gave me a real feeling for what the museums were all about and a sense of amazement and privilege, even for someone like me who has worked in museums for over a decade. So why aren’t there more behind the scenes opportunities? Below are a few of the challenges that we are facing in our own preparations.

A lack of physical space. When our facility was built in 1968, visitors were not a factor, let alone a priority, when it came to the areas where artifacts were being prepared and stored. These collection areas are now close to overflowing with artifacts and in many cases there is no room for a small group to gather.

Don’t feed the animals. Although people working in the museum understand the value of a good exhibition, we’d rather not be on display while working. It’s hard enough to work with a deadline looming over you, let alone with 10 pairs of eyes watching you. To the left: artist Adrienne Aikins working literally "inside the scenes" at the the Royal BC Museum.

Please do not touch. In the public galleries we work hard to ensure that there are hands-on opportunities whenever possible but specimens, artifacts and records behind the scenes are protected from all sorts of things including light and handling. How can we give visitors a glimpse of the vastness of the collections without putting the objects at risk?

Who leads the tours? In addition to their own research, curators, collection managers and other staff spend a lot of time with the public doing presentations and answering questions. Is leading a guided tour the best use of their time?

Could we become a victim of our own success? We took these issues into consideration and spoke with people in the know. Over Spring Break we ran a total of twelve test tours into three different collection areas. The first day we had to turn away as many people as we could take on the tour.

What’s next? More planning, testing and training have to take place before we launch the tours in July of this year so we can end up with an experience that is enjoyable for you and also sustainable for us.

You can comment here to help us with this planning. Have you ever taken a behind the scenes tour? Where was it and what was it that made it special? What would you like to see behind the scenes at the Royal BC Museum?

Slowing Down Real Life

This is my first blog entry. I’m going to write about the stresses… and joys of creating exhibitions.

Maybe there are only a few of us ‘exhibition geeks’ who think that what we do might interest others. But I hope that the strange world in which questions like ‘how do you simulate French fries?’ and ‘can you mould a slug?’ are commonplace, might be of some interest to others.

Our business is unusual. There are few professions that stretch so far between art and science, academia and showbiz, business and pleasure. In fact, are there any? Indeed, the very way we develop exhibitions seems to be fraught with paradox – is it science or art… education or entertainment?

I’ll try to focus on projects that we are working on right now, and give a glimpse of the magic and the confusion of this work.

I’m going to start with an exhibition called Royal BC Museum: Behind the Scenes. It opens on June 25. In it, we turn ourselves inside out to expose the work we do… behind the scenes [quelle surprise!]. Part One will run for more than a year and focus on the work of our Natural History staff. Part Two opens in 2011 with a focus on Human History.

How odd that for this inaugural post on the topic of contemporary exhibition challenges, I turn to one of the most traditional of museum art forms – the diorama. Not the great sweeping spectacles of the American Natural History Museum or the forest and coastal dioramas of our own museum, but tiny dioramas starring slugs, goldfish and mosquitoes! (Image below: Colin Longpre’s simulated French fries are a hit with starlings!)

A few years ago, I learned a big lesson from a small museum. Dioramas don’t need to be epic in scale. In fact, being tiny can sometimes focus the attention. The Museum of Jurassic Technology in Los Angeles is a lesson in the power of great storytelling in miniature.

I think dioramas are exquisitely interesting. They are low tech in a world of digital showiness. And yet, there is something compelling about them, even in the digital age. They are masterful representations of life in the original 3-D. Visitors love them for their clarity, their apparent reality and for the skill of the diorama artist. And maybe in a world where life is fleeting, transitory, and intangible, the diorama provides a welcome respite. Dioramas let us slow down and wonder. (Image below: Kate Kerr does a little miniature farming.)

To the challenge at hand – Behind the Scenes will feature a special presentation on the topic of invasive species. Our curators presented a menu of 30 invasive species as the focus. Now… we have a very talented and resourceful exhibitions team, but I have to say that the first reaction as they got their assignment was less than enthusiastic. Let’s face it… sometimes the subject of the show is not exactly movie star material... slugs, mosquitoes, starlings, goldfish… I mean, come on! But this is where the magic comes in. The creative process sometimes needs a few days of gestation… and before long our wonderful team of Exhibit Arts Technicians had started to mock up a whole series of scenes... miniature snapshots from life. I think the mundane nature of the topic became the very challenge. What I love about what they have done is how they resisted the temptation to use media and accepted the challenge of creating a world in three dimensions. And I love that the scenes are not the pristine visions of nature that the old dioramas represent… but rather they are about nature and us… starlings and French fries.

Tim Willis

Recommended reading and other links:

Great article: Diorama-o-rama by Jesse Smith

Great book: Windows on Nature: the great habitat dioramas of the American Museum of Natural History, Stephen Quinn

Great visit: the Museum of Jurassic Technology, Los Angeles