jamescareyuc

How did you learn how to collect, display and preserve insects?

If you look on the Internet, you'll find a few videos, but none as succinct, fast-paced and informative as the video clips on "How to Make an Insect Collection" that emerged from Professor James R. Carey's class at the UC Davis Department of Entomology.

Being a strong proponent of "information by video" and knowing that today's generation obtains much of its information that way, Carey (shown above) came up with the idea of a series of entomological "how-to" videos.

The first: "How to Make an Insect Collection."

The class that he taught last spring resulted in a series of video clips now posted on the department's website.

The entire series, totaling 11 clips ranging in length from 32 seconds to 77 seconds, can be viewed in just less than 10 minutes.

“So in less than 10 minutes, someone can learn how to make an insect collection,” Carey said. The clips are tightly scripted, with an emphasis on brevity, simplicity and low cost.

To learn how to make an insect collection, you just have to click on the titles.

Hand Collecting
Using an Aspirator
Ground Collecting
Aquatic
Using Nets
Killing
Pinning
Point Mounting
Labeling Specimens
Spreading
Storage and Display

“It was an engaging, enjoyable fulfilling and productive experience,” Carey said. The project will also serve as a model for other entomology students who wish to create their own module of “how to” videos.

Making the insect-collection module, Carey said, was a low tech-low cost operation partly by design: “I wanted production to be ‘low tech’ so that anyone who could use a point-and-shoot camera and basic movie-editing software could produce a video clip."

It needed to be low cost not only because of no funding for the project, but because the basic challenge was to produce a set of high-content-high quality video clips at virtually zero cost.

The videographers were undergraduate students Joseline Saldivar, Tylan Selby and Ralph Washington Jr., all with a strong interest in entomology; and entomology graduate students Emily Bzdyk, James Harwood, Brittany Nelms and Amy Morice.

Lights, camera, action!

Oh, where did that bug go?