Blast from the past, and why students today have it easy!

     This week we're going to step back in time to look at how the Oklahoma Museum of Natural History's Recent Invertebrates collection came about, and how those historical factors affect our current specimen holdings. The reason I'm bringing this topic up is because while cataloging some specimens for a loan (as well as specimens we're keeping here, too), I kept noticing how we have a lot of very old specimens. As in, early 1900's and quiet a lot in the 1930's. There were other specimens in later years, but the vast majority of our general collection is 1940's or earlier, and primarily Oklahoman.

Very old beetle from our collection...predates the Depression, Dust Bowl...etc.

      So, why do we have so much material from then? I decided to do a little digging into the history of the museum. The museum was established in 1899 by the Territorial Legislature (Oklahoma wasn't a state yet) and was to be associated with the University of Oklahoma, according to the document A History of the Stovall Museum of Science & History (the old museum building), University of Oklahoma by W. Eugene Hollon. When the museum started, it started with gusto and started accumulating and collection specimens from all over the state, nation and world. Unfortunately, though, there were two fires at the museum that destroyed most of the collections as they were just getting traction: one in 1903, and another in 1918. There were significant losses to several collections, and rebuilding them was a priority.
       The beetle in the picture above was probably donated after the 1918 fire, since Philip Spong was an entomologist and professor at Purdue University around that time. And we have several specimens collected in as early as 1911 that were also probably donated to our collection to help rebuild it. But donations like this, particularly from other states, are relatively small in comparison to the hundreds of specimens we have from counties all over Oklahoma from 1924 to the 1940's. Further, the collectors of these specimens aren't well-known entomologists, or possibly entomologists at all. How we did we get such a massive collecting spree of Oklahoma, from people that weren't doing research on them?
    The answer is: massive student labor! According to Mr Hollon's document, the Head of the Department of Zoology and Embryology (essentially all Life Sciences), a Dr. H. H. Lane, "recall[ed] particularly that during the fourteen years of his stay a the University, he required each class in entomology to make collections of at least 400 specimens, including ten or twelve of each species collected". Just so you know, that is a LOT of work! When I was a teaching assistant at Texas A&M University's Entomology department, our insect biodiversity course required that students get specimens from as many different families (groups) of insects as possible, with at least one specimen of 70 groups a passing grade, and that took a tremendous amount of time (especially the identifying). Can you imagine having to collect 400, and of each species you identify, have to have at least 10 to 12 specimens of it? No wonder we have so much material from that period!

Some of my current-generation students/colleagues at Texas A&M on an insect collecting trip. Collecting super-stars!

     So, thank you OU students from the past for helping provide the bulk of our rebuilt, post-fire collection, and providing a time capsule of that period in Oklahoma history! Even though I think its cruel and unusual punishment to ask that of our students today, every little contribution helps. That is our little dive into museum history for this week!