[Odonata-l] managing a small ode collection?

[Chris Hill]

I have a small personal collection (a couple hundred adults, a couple  
dozen larvae, maybe 50 exuviae.  I started out just keeping vouchers  
of new county records, but I've discovered how useful it is to have  
some reference material of various species, so the collection is  
growing a bit.  I've been keeping the adults in clear poly envelopes  
in a two-drawer metal library card file.  I like the card file.   
Although it's not airtight, I haven't had any bug issues (I usually  
have mothballs in there), and just pulling out a drawer is convenient  
(inside, species are alphabetical within family or genus, with  
"divider" cards to mark each family or genus).  But I'm outgrowing it,  
and there's quite a bit of breakage that happens.  I just started  
keeping the exuviae, and I've got them in some small jars and vials.

How much breakage of adults is normal?  Seems like about 10% of the  
darners are broken (just looked).

Shoe boxes don't seem very elegant - does anyone have suggestions for  
how to store a small but growing collection like this?  I'm tempted to  
get a larger card catalog if I can find one on ebay for the right price.

How do people store exuviae?  Jars?  Envelopes?  Dry or wet?  A dry  
Gomphus exilis exuvia will fit in a small "shell vial," but there's no  
squashing a Macromia into anything small.

Happy for any tips.

Chris


************************************************************************
Christopher E. Hill
Biology Department
Coastal Carolina University
Conway, SC 29528-1954
chill AT coastal.edu
http://ww2.coastal.edu/chill/chill.htm