Small Beetle Protocol¶

For beetles mounted on points that require higher magnification:

EXAMPLE IMAGE: this photo cannot be used due to the limited number of pixels that each beetle occupies, and confusion about appendages of the beetle vs background words on the labels.

Equipment Setup¶

• Use a camera and macro lens with appropriate magnification:
  • Canon EOS DSLR (model 7D).
  • 24–105 mm macro lens.
• Use B Tray for rearranging A Trays where necessary.
• External flashes.
• Defusion paper, in a cone that extends from camera lens to table around tray (ref photo).

Specimen Staging¶

• Only B and C Trays allow for appropriate magnification.
• Include a scale bar in bottom right of the container:
  • This is where there is most likely to be room to add in a scale bar, because of way beetles are arranged from top to bottom left to right.
• Ensure that the scale bar is level with the beetles, and that all beetles are level with each other (in a single focal plane).
  • This is essential to measuring the size of the beetles, if the scale bar is above or below the beetles in height, the measurement will not be correct.
• ensure beetles are sequentially based on individual ID numbers.
• Maintain consistent orientation for all specimens.
• Ensure that beetles are not on the edges of the photo to prevent distortion and poor focus. See example of poor focus: tray of small pinned beetles. The beetle in the top left of the image is surrounded by a black box with a diagonal line to a larger black box taking up most of the image, which is the beetle zoomed in and it is not in focus: gently fuzzy, particularly around the extremities and antennae. The text on the label pinned below the specimen is clearly out of focus

Image Capture¶

• Zoom into an individual beetle with the magnifying glass on the bottom right of the touch screen.
• Manually focus on the specimen.
• Use an F-stop of 5.6.
  • A lower f stop decreases the depth of field, and makes the label more blurry, allowing for segmentation of the beetle from the underlying text.
• Center the beetles in the images.
• Ensure the scale bare is not on the very edge of the photo (avoid distortion).
• Use flashes on TTL (automatic).
  • Ensure exposure looks good in the final image.

Metadata for Small Beetles¶

For small beetles there is a separate sheet in the metadata sheet called “SmallBeetles” (column values defined on ColumnNames Sheet):

• Mark: Record “yes” once the header label of the unit tray has been marked with a pen to denote that imaging has occurred.
• If beetles need to be temporarily moved from an A Tray to a B Tray for imaging, record B under trayType add “From A tray” to the notes column, if they are permanently moved to a B tray, no note is necessary.
• In some cases, you will not have 4 beetles for the individual ID records, in this case do the following:
  • 1 Beetle: Record the IndividualID in IndividualID_1 and enter NA to other columns.
  • 2 Beetles: Record the IndividualID in IndividualID_1 and IndividualID_n and enter NA the middle columns (this is very important for querying).
  • 1 Beetles: Record the IndividualIDs in IndividualID_1, IndividualID_2 and IndividualID_n and enter NA the middle column (this is very important for querying).