As it says on the title, I am planning on moving out and unfortunately, with my current situation I don’t think I’m able to retain my insect collection. It is several shelves and has insects collected over quite a few years (since I was a little kid pretty much). I’m not entirely sure what to do with it, it would break my heart if I wind up throwing it away.
What do people do with their collections when things like this happen? Is there a place/person I can give it to that may be able to process it so that it won’t go to waste? They weren’t the most professionally documented (I was say ten or eleven when I started), but there’s quite a lot of insects from a variety of groups represented. There’s a bit of an uptick in quality since I got better with preparing the specimens.
For the record, I am from the Lower Mainland, in British Columbia, Canada. Let me know! I would love to be in touch with someone who might be able to help.
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You can’t upload as photo on iNat since it is captive, but you certainly can take about ithere! That’s a cool collection.
Some of the bugs are wild caught and I know where they were sourced from generally, so they probably wouldn’t count as captive. I do plan on photographing them and putting them on iNat. However, unfortunately, that doesn’t solve my issue of needing to know what I can do with the physical collection once I’m done photographing by in large.
Are your insects labeled with date and place of capture? If so, a museum or university with a collection would be happy to take them – and associated boxes, etc. Perhaps you would be willing to donate any collection notebooks or other records, or arrange for their donation en your will. I believe There are appropriate institutions in Vancouver. I recommend contacting the Zoology Department of the University of British Columbia. It’s Spencer Entomology Collection is very large.
What if there’s no date/place data? Then you might find a university or other organization that teaches class in entomology would want them for their teaching lab.
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Kind of a mix of the two. Probably mostly the latter though, I was too young to pay attention to the necessity of collection data at the time unfortunately.
If anyone happens to have a connection in the Lower Mainland I’d love to see if I can arrange for the transportation of the collection.
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(I just edited my response to recommend contacting the Zoology Department of the University of British Columbia, which has the large Spencer Entomology Collection.)
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