What’s on the van? – Swallowtail butterfly

This week’s What’s on the van? comes from Amo Spooner, of the Museum’s Life Collections.

Papilio nobilis didingensis

This is a subspecies of butterfly in the family Papilionidae, commonly known as Swallowtail butterflies. It takes its name from its distinctive curved outline. This particular specimen is a paratype housed here in the Hope Entomological Collections, Life Collections. It was collected by G. D. H. Carpenter (who was the Hope Professor from 1933–1948) in the Didinga Mountains, South Sudan in 1925. His wife accompanied and collected with him and was reported to be the first white woman to visit Didinga.

Papilio nobilis didingensis on the van

The species Papilio nobilis, or the Noble Swallowtail, was first described by Rogenhofer in 1891 from Uganda. Then in 1928, Carpenter described this as a new subspecies in the Transactions of the Royal Entomological Society of London. As with all newly described species, the description of the specimen has to be published and those specimens are ideally housed within a museum collection for safe keeping. Carpenter gave the type specimen (a female) and 4 paratypes to our Hope Entomological Collections and other paratypes went to the Natural History Museum in London and to collections at Tring and Witley.

In his description, Carpenter explains that although plentiful in Didinga, they found this subspecies difficult to catch, except when they were fluttering at flowers or drinking fluids from mud. Carpenter also makes comparisons between his specimens and a fine series of P. nobilis collected in Uganda; he observed that the dark markings are variable depending on the locality of the butterfly.

What’s on the van? – Stromatolite

This week’s What’s on the van? comes from Dr Tracy Aze, Museum of Natural History Research Fellow.

This rock called a stromatolite (from the Greek strōma, meaning mattress or bed and lithos meaning rock) is from a very old suite of rocks called the Porsanger Dolomite Formation in Norway, and is at least 542 million years old.

Modern day stromatolites in the Hamelin Pool Marine Nature Reserve, Shark Bay, Australia.

Stromatolites are produced by the activity of ancient blue-green algae, otherwise known as cyanobacteria. The algae are photosynthetic and need good light conditions to allow them to photosynthesise, consequently they live in shallow waters where sunlight can penetrate. They grow in thin mats on the sea floor, which helps them maximise the amount of light they receive. Over time these mats are covered by sediment grains, which block the sunlight and the algae move up through the sediment layer as they migrate back towards the light. This process happens time and time again over many years and the layering that can be seen in this rock is built up as a result.

The algae that produce stromatolites represent some of the earliest life forms on Earth and some deposits have been dated at 3.5 billion years old! Although they are some of our most primitive life forms, communities of these types of algae can still be found living today in shallow warm waters in places such as Western Australia and The Bahamas and visiting these places is thought to be bit like looking through a window to our distant geological past.

What’s on the van? – Jervis Label

This week’s What’s on the van? comes from Monica Price, Head of Earth Collections.

A story to tell
Each of the millions of different objects in our Museum has a story to tell – what it is, where it is from, who collected it, when and why. All that information is collected together on the specimen’s label, and museum curators look after labels like this just as carefully as they do the specimens themselves.

Some of the labels in the Museum are very old, but the handwriting can be distinctive. Although this label does not say who wrote it, we can tell from the handwriting, the style of number, and the Italian locality, that it was written by an Englishman called William Jervis. He was a geologist who worked at the Museo Industriale Italiano (Italian Industry Museum) in Turin during the second half of the 19^th century.

William Jervis wrote books on the rocks and minerals of Italy that are important for ores, building materials and water supplies. He also put together sets of rocks samples to be sold to other museums and universities. He trimmed each one to a neat rectangular shape and gave it a number. On the label, he’d write the number, what the rock was, and exactly where it was collected. Some of his labels are very detailed indeed and show that his samples came from places no longer accessible today. The specimen accompanying this label is one of a set of Sardinian rocks. It comes from San Giovannni mine, near Iglesias, and shows the kind of grey limestone that was found close to the ‘lode’, the vein of lead and zinc ore minerals which was being worked by the miners.

Do you have a collection of geological specimens, or maybe shells, plants or insects? It is always a good idea to do what William Jervis did, put a number on each specimen (maybe using a little paper label), and then write all the information about it on a label. It’s also a good idea to keep that information all together in a book or on a computer so that if a label goes missing, the information is kept safe. Don’t forget to keep a back-up of your computer file though, just in case!

What’s on the van? – Oxford Dodo

It’s time for one of the stars of the Museum’s collection! One of our most famous specimens, the dodo even features on our logo.

This week’s What’s on the van? comes from Malgosia Nowak-Kemp, Collections Manager in the Museum’s Life Collections.

The Dodo of Mauritius was discovered in the late sixteenth century by Dutch sailors stopping on the island for water and fresh food supplies. Because of its inability to fly, the Dodo was considered a great exotic curiosity and a few of the birds were shipped to Europe, India and Japan. One of them ended up in London, in the Tradescant collection. This collection, widely known as the “Ark”, was assembled in the seventeenth century by gardeners to the royalty and aristocracy, father and son John Tradescant. The stuffed Dodo was displayed to the public and described in the Tradescants’ catalogue as “Dodar, from the island of Mauritius. It is not able to fly, being so big”.

After the death of the Tradescants, the “Ark” was presented by its new owner, Elias Ashmole, to the University of Oxford, and in 1683 placed in the newly built Ashmolean Museum. Over the years, the specimens suffered from damage inflicted by insect pests and too frequent handling by visitors, and by 1756 only the Dodo’s head and one of its feet remained.

In 1848 it was firmly established that the Dodo was a member of the pigeon order: Columbiformes. In 2002, with application of DNA analysis, the Oxford Dodo yielded even more information about its origin. We now know that several million years ago its ancestors arrived in Mauritius from the Nicobar Islands, off India. Finding no natural enemies in their new habitat, and no competition for food, the lineage evolved in size and gradually lost its ability to fly. But in the end its size was not enough protection to stop humans, and animals introduced by them, like pigs, rats and monkeys, from causing the Dodo’s extinction.

What’s on the van? – Silk Moth

This week’s What’s on the van? comes from Kotaro Fujiyoshi, a work experience student from Merchant Taylors’ school in Middlesex. He is currently on placement in the Museum’s Hope Entomological Collections.

This picture is of a silk moth called Rothschildia jorulla, which was described as a new species to science by the Museum’s first Professor of Entomology, John Obadiah Westwood (1805 –1893). It was collected in Cuautla, Morelos, Mexico in 1853.

Moths of this kind belong to a group called silk moths, or saturniids. There are over 2000 species of saturniids, one of them the world’s largest moth, Attacus atlas. This group of moths are widely exploited across many cultures as sources of silk. Some species of the group are very well known, for example the silk worm (Bombyx mori), used by Chinese textile manufacturers from at least 5000 years ago. This Rothschildia is no exception, as its silk has been used for producing textiles in Mexico.

Unlike their domesticated counterpart, the silkworm, this moth is very well adapted to a life in the wild. For example, its four translucent patches and two black eye-like spots on the wings can easily be mistaken for eyes. Birds looking for a meal would peck at these obvious vulnerabilities instead of the body, so that all the important organs and flight muscles of the moth are protected from a fatal blow.

Saturniids have reduced or completely dysfunctional proboscises (mouthparts) and do not feed. This means that they are very short-lived as adults, surviving for only about 2 to 3 weeks. They are able to survive these weeks without eating due to their energy stores: as caterpillars, they eat enough food to last them all the way from pupation to the end of their short few weeks as adults. After emergence, the males spend the majority of their remaining time fluttering about, looking for mates. Females emit sex pheromones, vital clues for the males, and the males smell their way to find their mates, using their comb-like antennae.

Saturniids are most diverse in the tropics and are often seen flying to house and street lights on relatively windless nights of warm seasons.

What’s on the van? – Black-capped kingfisher

This week’s What’s on the van? comes from Malgosia Nowak-Kemp, Collections Manager in the Museum’s Life Collections.

Kingfishers belong to a family Alcenidae where they are organised into 14 genera with 86 species. Most of them live in the tropics and only a small number of species venture into temperate zones as migrant breeders. Some species feed on forest-floor or air-borne insects, some prey on birds and reptiles and some, similar to our native species, on fish. Kingfishers living away from water, called the tree kingfishers, adopt a sit-and-wait strategy to catch their prey on the ground, whereas kingfishers living near lakes, rivers or streams, the so-called river kingfishers, deep-dive either from a perch or from hovering flight.

The kingfisher you see painted on the van is called the black-capped kingfisher, Latin name Halcyon pileata. It lives in tropical Asia, from India to China, Korea and Southeast Asia. This is a relatively big kingfisher whose length reaches about 28cm.

The black-capped kingfisher is a river kingfisher, found near coastal waters, especially in mangroves. It surveys the area from a high perch and hunts not only for insects but also for frogs and fish. As in other kingfishers, it has very good eyesight, enabling it to cope with reflections on the rippling surface and light refraction of the water, which makes the prey appear to be nearer the surface than it really is.

It makes its nest on the banks near water, with both sexes excavating the nest tunnel. A single clutch of 4-5 round white eggs is typical, with the female being mostly responsible for the incubation. The eggs hatch at daily intervals, resulting in a marked size difference between the chicks. Both parents are equally involved with feeding the brood.

This particular specimen of the black-capped kingfisher was collected in Bangladesh and, after being prepared by a taxidermist, was displayed in a glazed case for a number of years. It came to the Museum in 1963 as part of a large donation of bird skins presented by B.B. Osmaston.

What’s on the van? – 7 spot ladybird

This week’s What’s on the van? comes from Richard Comont of the Centre for Ecology and Hydrology.

The 7-spot ladybird, Coccinella septempunctata, is one of the most iconic examples of British wildlife. Probably our best-known beetle, its image has been used as the logo for books, clothes, and much more.

It’s one of our largest ladybirds, up to 8mm long, and it can be found almost anywhere – it’s not fussy about habitat and usually arrives shortly after an aphid colony has established. Gardens and rough ground are good areas for the species – they especially love nettle patches!  Their bright red colouration makes them easy to spot, but is actually a warning to predators – ladybirds practice chemical warfare by producing a foul-tasting yellow liquid from their knee joints when disturbed.

The 7-spot has been familiar to farmers and gardeners throughout history as a brightly-coloured guardian against greenfly, and it’s from this that ladybirds get their slightly odd name. Bright red in colour (matching the cloak of the virgin Mary in early biblical illustrations) and with seven black spots recalling the seven sorrows of Mary, these tiny predators were clearly a gift from the gods to farmers suffering from aphids on their crops, and so they became known as ‘Our Lady’s birds’, which became shortened to ‘ladybirds’.

Most people recognise the 7-spot, but are surprised to hear that there are actually 47 different ladybird species in Britain alone! The UK Ladybird Survey team have published a new ladybird handbook to help people learn about and identify these fascinating insects – why not submit your next sighting at www.ladybird-survey.org?

What’s on the van? – Portuguese Man-of-War

This week’s What’s on the van? comes from Kate Pocklington. Kate was the Museum’s Zoology Conservator, before moving to Singapore to work at the Raffles Museum of Biodiversity Research.

Physalia physalis is commonly known as Portuguese Man-of-War or in Australia, Blue Bottle. Despite often being labelled as jellyfish, physalids are actually siphonophores, which are colonies of many morphologically different individuals attached to each other and working together as a single entity. Physalia captures prey using venomous cells, which shoot out stinging barbs when disturbed.

Physalia washed up on a beach

They appear translucent blue when alive, but unfortunately due to death and method of preservation this one has lost its brilliant colour. I value this specimen because of its preparation.

Great care would have been taken to collect and preserve it as, even when dead, physalids remain venomous. The techniques of preservation used here help to display the natural form. This has been done using glass floats attached to the pneumatophore (the individual polyp at the top, a gas filled ‘balloon’) which replicates the natural position of the specimen in the sea. This also helps to show the length of the tentacles.

Physalia on the van

Without fluid preservation it would be almost impossible to use invertebrates such as this for educational purposes. This method of preservation captures not only the specimen but the development of techniques used over many years incorporating scientific and educational values together. This specimen is just one of approximately 25,000 jars of fluid preserved specimens in the Museum’s collections.

This piece is taken from the Museum’s 2010 exhibition A Few of our Favourite Things.