Thread subject: Diptera.info :: Standards in Slide Mounting

Posted by Gunnar M Kvifte on 10-10-2014 17:50
#6

As a taxonomist, I do not make temporary slides. Any identification I publish or deposit in a public collection must be available for later corroboration or revision by other specialists. Otherwise, what I do would not be repeatable, and it would be less scientific.
I also do this for the species that can be identified in alcohol, to improve my understanding of their morphology and to ensure uniformity in the collections I work with. It is much harder to manage a collection of some alcohol specimens and some slides than it is to manage a collection where all specimens are stored in the same way.

Heated maceration regularly destroys important taxonomic characters of the antennae (in Psychodids, that is). Unheated maceration takes longer, but if you regularly check on the state of the specimens you will be able to avoid both overclearing and underclearing.