From:   rudefait@isu.edu
Subject: Re: Voucher Specimens
Date: August 14, 2008 11:17:07 AM AKDT
To:   ffdss@uaf.edu
Dear Derek, 

I apologize.  Yes, I grouped insects into morpho-species groups, and likely grouped many species together accidentally because I have very little formal entomological training.  The insects with labels written by specialists were the insects seen by those specialists.  Those that were penciled in later are members of the same morphospecies group as ones identified by the specialists to that species.  I naively assumed that the other members of that morphospecies group would match the ones the specialist identified.  I am certain that all species names listed on the labels were collected by our group, because specialists looked at those insects and gave me those names.  However, unfortunately it appears that those names are often incorrect for other members of that morphospecies and in many cases the specialists kept the specimens they identified.  I believe the best thing to do would be to change the penciled-in labels to something that would reflect that these are members of the same morphospecies group that contains the species that they were labeled as.  I realize that this likely will make a lot of work for you and diminish the value of the collection, for which I apologize again.  Had I realized the inaccuracy of my morphospecies grouping, I would have requested that more of the specialists return the insects and would have tried to send out more individual members of morphospecies.

Thank you for catching these errors in my labeling and grouping of these specimens.  Please contact me with further questions. 

Faith Rudebusch

Faith,

We had a blowfly specialist in the museum yesterday, Terry Whitworth. He looked at two blowflies from your voucher series that had been determined as Cynomya mortuorum by N. Woodly. However, these flies were not C. mortuorum but instead were Protophormia terraenovae - a mistake that Woodly would not have made. C. mortuorum has a bright orange face and Woodly knows this. Therefore I have to ask you about what procedure you used in obtaining your identifications.

The proper procedure is to only label specimens with an identification if those specimens had been identified by the specialist. Since Woodly would not have made this mistake the only conclusion I can imagine is that he did not put that name on those flies -but then, who did? Mix ups like this sometimes happen when someone uses 'morpho-species' to group specimens into what they think are species - then they send off for identification a portion of the series & when the names are returned it is assumed that all the specimens belong to that species. If this were done, the proper procedure would be for the non-specialist to place their own determination labels because they are the one who has assigned the specimens to that species. But this is not safe because a 'morpho-species' series made by a non-specialist is often a mixture of different species.

In this case there were no C. mortuorum in your vouchers so either Woodly kept those that he received or there is some other answer to this mystery. I noted that some of the specimens in your voucher set had original determination labels written by the specialists themselves while others didn't - they had labels written in pencil by someone else. For those that didn't have original labels... can you tell me where the original labels are? Who wrote these pencil labels and how was it determined those specimens were those species? Did the specialists actually look at them?

I'd like to know this so I can be prepared to deal with other confusing cases among these specimens should they occur.

Thanks,
Derek

Hello Dr. Sikes,

 

My former graduate student, Faith Rudebusch, whose research was part of the Sanak Biocomplexity Project, took care of depositing voucher specimens of insects from the collecting we did on Sanak, Elma, and Sisters Islands, Alaska, with the U Alaska Museum and apparently did not give you proper information about the samples. They  appear to be listed as gifts to the Museum from Faith Rudebusch, but they actually are specimens from a funded research project on which she worked and should be linked to that project, the Sanak Biocomplexity Project, which was funded by NSF BE/CNH 0508101. I hope you can correct this error in the records, and I apologize for allowing it to occur in the first place.

If over time any of the specimens she sent to you are identified to finer levels, we would greatly appreciate  if you would pass the word along to me, so that we can update the project records.

I try to follow the biological inventory work you are doing in the Aleutians. We found little with which to compare what we found on Sanak, and more information on the region is very useful. I would appreciate receiving pdfs of any of this work you may have published or publish in the future.

I think you also work in southeast Alaska with my friend Joe Cook. If so, maybe I will see you in the field sometime, as I hope to have some research going with Joe soon.

I am currently a Program Director at NSF, but will leave at the end of the summer and move to Utah State U, so I have copied this email to myself at another email address that will continue when I leave NSF.

Thanks and best wishes,

Nancy Huntly