In May of 2023, I was fortunate enough to help a professor of mine teach a 2-week intensive course in the mountains on biomonitoring with the EPT (Ephemeroptera, Plecoptera, Trichoptera) taxa: mayflies, stoneflies, and caddisflies. In doing so, I repeatedly ran up against the fact that the teaching collection (that we had for students to get to see more examples of the taxa they were collecting and identifying) was a little bit worse for wear, and the specimens it contained were pretty well torn up.
I happen to have an internship with the insect museum on campus (funded through the state forestry commission), so I checked with the museum curator about it and offered to spend some of my time this summer going through the collection to check IDs and replace destroyed specimens. Initially I'd intended to do all 3 orders, but I've realized that this is actually kind of a massive undertaking and so I'm focusing on getting the mayflies finished.
So, as of August 3, how's it going? Well! I'm so glad you asked.
This is what I've got so far in the drawers! On the left, there's the genera I still need to pull and check. On the right, there's the ones I've already gone through (only larvae, I haven't added adults yet).
Here's my list of "what I've got" and "what I've not"! It's got 23 genera on the "got" list, 8 on the "need" list, another 8 on the "want" list, and 1 on the "need but don't have" list. Need vs want is determined by which ones are possibilities on the standardized taxonomic exam for the region! The one genus on the "need but don't have" list is Attenella, which is in the family Ephemerellidae. We have about 5 specimens of it in the main collection, and every single one is databased already. So that puts a damper on including it (and tells me why it wasn't in there in the first place!) -- Mike, the museum curator, suggested I email out to the listserv of entomologists in ECN (the collections network) and ask if anyone had specimens that they were willing to donate.
Well, as of August 7... I've finished the Ephemeroptera! We're missing larvae of five genera that the SFS exam has the potential to include, but there's nothing to be done about it. So I brought all the drawers back over to the teaching lab. Tomorrow I'm going to start back up on photographing residues, if my boss will send me the label data. If not, I'll work on labeling stuff that's already been processed.