FNZ 9 - Protura (Insecta) - Collecting, Preparation and Study
Tuxen, SL 1986. Protura (Insecta). Fauna of New Zealand 9, 52 pages.
(
ISSN 0111-5383 (print),
;
no.
09.
ISBN 0-477-06765-4 (print),
).
Published 24 Feb 1986
ZooBank: http://zoobank.org/References/6B017956-58FF-4405-9795-98BA1D6FE682
Collecting, Preparation, and Study
Being very small and white or colourless animals with slow movements, the Protura are difficult to catch sight of with the naked eye. I know (and have seen myself) that some Chinese proturologists can; but I have always collected them with the aid of Berlese funnels or Tullgren funnels. The sample is placed on a wire screen at the top of the funnel, and is dried by means of hot water surrounding it (Berlese) or by light from above (Tullgren). The animals leave the soil and are collected below; the Protura are then sorted out. This treatment may be used for quantitative analysis if the soil sample is taken with a corer of known size and the sample is divided into subunits from different depths.
Under the stereomicroscope it may be possible to distinguish between the genera or even species of fresh material, but most often it is not, and so the specimens must be cleared and prepared as slide mounts. The solution used for clearing may be Faure's fluid or Hoyer's medium or other agents, but all are derived from Berlese's medium and contain chloral hydrate. For clearing, the slides must be put immediately into an oven at about 55°C and stay there for some days, preferably a week, so that they are quite dry. They may be sealed with, e.g., epoxy resin or fingernail polish. The slides are studied under a compound microscope, and oil- immersion objectives of × 100 magnification may be necessary. Phase-contrast objectives may be advantageous when there is any doubt. For identification, Tuxen (1964) is the earliest monograph, but identification keys have been published more recently for the south-east Asian Protura (Imadate 1965), the Australian ones (Tuxen 1967), the Japanese (Imadate 1974), the European (Nosek 1973), and the Brazilian (Tuxen 1976), to mention some faunas of relevance to the New Zealand situation.