Sorting Platygastroidea Identified Material

Introduction

This section contains procedures for handling Platygastroidea material that has been identified and whose specimen data has been transcribed.

Procedures

Sorting Individual Drawers

1. Remove a drawer from cabinet one. Make sure it is a drawer that has been sort to genus, not just to family.
2. Grab a drawer of unit trays for the material to be sorted into from cabinet seven.
   • Make sure you have a good mixture of small and medium-sized soft unit trays and one hard-bottomed tray to place excess labels in.
3. Scan the drawer of specimens to be sorted and look for the first alphabetically. Working your way through the drawer, remove all specimens of that type and place them together in a single unit tray
   • If there are too many to fit in one unit try, move onto a second, but do not forget to place a label at the upper left corner of that tray as well.
   • If a row of specimens has a determination label at the beginning, do not mix those in even with specimens of the same genus. They can be placed in the same unit try but must remain separate.
4. Continue this process until all specimens are sorted alphabetically by genus.
   • When you come across any of the genera listed on the Target List, any genus followed by MS or preceded by "nr.", or sorted into the subfamilies Scelioninae, Telenominae, or Teleasinae, make sure to remove them and place them in the VIBs (Very Important Bugs) Drawer located toward the bottom of cabinet one.
5. After you have sorted two or three individual drawers into genus, you may choose to combine these drawers together (using similar protocol as above) as this will make the next step more efficient.

• If you come across insects that are oriented in different directions, do not orient them in the same direction. Retain the original orientation as this denotes gender. Also, in regards to gender, when you come across tags with the male or female symbols, keep these specimens grouped together. For example, if you have a male symbol followed by five specimens, do not just begin to place other, unsexed material after the fifth male. Instead, place another label after the fifth and then begin to add the other specimens.

Sorting into Alphabetized Drawers

1. In cabinet eight, you will see a few dozen drawers with letters on the front. Scan your sorted genera and use the carts to grab the first four or five drawers you will need.
   • It is actually time-saving to note which drawers will be necessary. For example, if you grabbed drawers A through F but you did not have any genera that began with 'B' to place in them, you have made unnecessary work for yourself.
   • Some drawers in cabinet eight will be used specifically for one genus. This if often the case for genera of which the collection has many, i.e., Telenomus. When these become full, follow the instructions in the next subsection.
2. Place the genera into the correctly labeled drawers, trying to keep them in alphabetical order within the new drawers as well. When you have finished with the first load, take them back and continue the process until all genera have been sorted into cabinet eight.
   • If you come across a specimen that does not belong to OSUC, as indicated by a colored tag on the pin, you will need to sort them in a similar fashion into the Collections drawers located in cabinets nine and ten.

Sorting Full Drawers Containing a Single Genus

When you fill a drawer in cabinet eight with a single genus, remove that drawer and sort the genus into the locations in which it was collected. Certain locations will usually go into certain collections, most have tags denoting the collection they are part of, or in ROME's case have a ROM number or IIS number on the insect label, but for those that do not, here is a rough categorization of where they go:

• OSUC:
  • North American: Virgin Islands, Mexico - P&K
  • South America: Belize, Chile, Colombia (M#s),
  • Africa: South Africa - collected by Philips, Tunisia
  • Europe: Sweden, Italy, Spain
  • Asia: Russia, Israel, Thailand (T#s)
    • For Costa Rican, New Caledonian (and South African material collected by Irwin), Paraguayan, and some Brazilian specimens, they will have to be separated out and place in the proper cabinets in the fourth row.
• IZIKO
  • Africa: South African - collected by van Noort

As always, you have any question in your mind about what to do, ask before you take any action.

*Add notes for where to put specimens after sorted into collections/localities

Labels

• When sorting different trays of the same genus together, you may remove excess labels and consolidate the specimens.
• Do not remove labels if:

1. The label is a determination label.
2. The insects come from different collections.

• Handwritten labels (except for determination labels), excess collection labels, and excess gender tags may be discarded and the pins sorted into their correct vials in the red boxes located in the blue shelves near Joe.
• Typed labels will be saved and sorted into the drawer marked 'Labels' in cabinet seven.

Resources

• Target Taxa