Detting: determining large samples of beetles

I've just finished a large job, identifying some really interesting and worthwhile beetle samples for a research project.

It's not an ideal situation, to be stuck at the microscope inbetween trying to carry out all my survey fieldwork commitments, and while May is rushing past outside.

Here's an insight into what I've been doing. First, take a tube of beetles: 

 

Second, tip them out into a petri dish.

 

Third, roughly sort out the bigger beetles onto a pad of damp tissue.

 

Identify them and write down all the names and counts.

 

Repeat for all the medium and small beetles.

 

 

 

That just leaves a residue of aleocharine staphylinids, which I will save for a later date!

 

All the identified beetles go back in the original tube, in case there is a need to revisit any of them. The aleocharines are in the smaller red-capped tube. They took about another hour or so to identify and count.

 

The sample contained 309 individual beetles of 52 different species. It took about 3 hours all told.

I like that feeling of a job done well, and I was pleased to be able to work through this sample and ID most of the specimens on sight, only having to consult keys or reference specimens for Mordellistena neuwaldeggiana (that we've been calling humeralis until Brian Levey's paper last month), Coeliodes rana and ruber, and a female Bisnius subuliformis.