Hi All, Ethanol definitely causes shrinkage in invert specimens, particularly soft-bodied immatures. KAAD is a “larval fixative” that causes the body to expand (somewhat beyond normal parameters), making them appear “inflated”. I do not know if there is a standard for the percentage of shrinkage/inflation.
Jim From: Malcolm McCallum Sent: Sunday, September 18, 2016 9:38 PM To: [email protected] Subject: Re: [ECOLOG-L] Change in linear dimensions of soft tissues in larval insect when fixed Soft body parts will have signficant shrinkage. This has been demonstrated conclusively with vertebrates, specifically with larval and juvenile fishes. With vertebrates, as they get larger, the signficance of this shrinkage tends to be less. I would expect similar results with inverts, except that there is actually a lot more softbody exoskeleton in most inverts than we typically consider. THere should be papers demonstrating shrinkage in invertebrates, however, I would be pretty surprised if you find much information on larviformes. My expectation is that larvae are going to have huge amounts of shrinkage. I would expect adult coleoptera, particularly Scarabidae, Cuculionidae, Carabidae, Erotylidae, Coccinelidae, and other typical beetle forms to have minimal shrinkage Stapholyindae probably show much more as adults. Orthoptera undoubtedly shrink in body length, I would not be surprised if some shrink more than 10%. Related Mantoidea (I think it is now an Order rather than family), and other orthopteran like families will behave similarly. Odonates may shrink a ton, Hemiptera are probably variable like Coleoptera, ditto for the leafhoppers and cicadas Hymenoptera and Diptera probably shrink a bit as adults, but some families more so than others. Larvae and nymphs will probably shrink pretty bad for all groups. Crustaceans may not shrink much at all thanks to the calciferous exoskeleton, but again this will depend as something like a hermit crab sill show a lot of abdominal shrinkage. I am sure the invertebrate biologists will know a lot more about this than me. These are largely wha On Fri, Sep 16, 2016 at 2:43 PM, Jorge A. Santiago-Blay <[email protected]> wrote: Change in linear dimensions of soft tissues in larval insect when fixed Dear Ecolog-Listers: I have nearly ca. 200 museum specimens of aquatic larval insects (1-3 cm long) that I assume were killed by dumping them in (at the minimum) 70% ethanol. In the only one case that the label states anything about preservation method, it reads "KAAD --> 95%". I assume that several changes in ethanol 70% have taken place to refill vials, as needed, in the 48-77 years since the specimens have been dead. Question: While the hard body parts will barely change in dimension with time, does anyone know how does the softer body parts change in size? Is there any variation in size change whether the preservation took place early or late in the instar? If you have any constructive suggestions, please email me directly at [email protected] Apologies for potential duplicate emails. 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