Collecting of Specimens

THE COLLECTING OF SPECIMENS

When collecting Specimens from the veld no matter if it is plant nor animal nor insect you have to be super care full with what you do and how you do it so that you don't damage the specimen that your taken and in that way you can use it for many years to come.

Specimens are taken from nature for a few reason which includes research and education, you can put them in a museum tipe of room at your facility or school for futher learners, workers to have the opertunity of seeing your work and learning from it!

Veld specimens of both plants and animals can be collected,they can be part of, or the complete plant nor animal. Veld specimens require careful documentation. the following should be recorded:

• Name of Specimen
• Location
• Habitat
• Frequency of occurrence
• Habit
• Collector
• Date of collection
• Weather Conditions

When Collecting plant specimen you should have:

• A pair of secateurs to cut branches
• A small pick to loosen the ground around the plant
• A small hand spade to remove loosened soil
• Plastic bags as temporary storage for plants.
• A note book
• A pencil

This is just a few of things that you will require when going out to get specimens. There is alot of different methods ass well as to collecting insect specimens.

• Bait
• Light
• Pitfall trap
• Sweeping
• Beating
• Visual search
• Litter sampling

So starting from the top im going to tel you a little bit more about each of the top mentioned metods.

1. Bait- Is a mixture of rotten fruit and foods put out to a place to attract flies, ants ect.
2. Light-Is when a light is put on at night to attract all night insects
3. Pitfall trap-Is when you make a whole in the ground put a container in the whole with the top level with te ground
4. Sweeping-This is were you would make use of your net that you made and sweep it through a vegetation where you would like to collect your specimen
5. Beating-Is were you take a branch and start beating on a bush or shake a buch to see what kind of insects you can find there
6. Visual search-Is when you walk and crawl and see what kind of insects you can catch
7. Litter Sampling-Is where you take a bunch of leafes and shake it to see what you can find. This leafes will be from a dump site.

there you go that is Veld specimens in a nut shell