Dear Pestlist, I have an unusual question I am desperately hoping someone can help Museum Of The Rockies with today. Our paleontology department took several large fossils over to our university for use in a class. A graduate student left a jar of dermestid beetles open overnight. Yes, that happened. Thousands of beetles escaped the jar and have now been in contact with the fossils. It is unknown if there are any beetles inside the fossils, but they are in jackets and also have many crevices, so we must assume there may be some beetles inside the specimens. We do not have a freezer for controlled low temperature treatment at our museum. (We don’t know if the university labs may have one, but even if they do, we don’t know if we would be able to use it, so we are hoping to find a different method we can do ourselves.) Other than freezing, does anyone have suggestions for the proper protocols for treatment? E.g., suggestions for what we can do with them, how long they should be quarantined before they return to the museum, or if there’s a way to keep them separated in the museum, when will it be safe to return them to the collection, etc. Perhaps someone has experience with reckless students allowing beetles to invade collections… It is rather cold in Montana right now, but it hasn’t been getting to -20!
Thank you for any advice you may have, Melissa Melissa Dawn Interim Registrar & Collections Manager Division of the Humanities Museum of the Rockies melissa.d...@montana.edu 406.994.2242<tel:406.994.2242> 600 West Kagy Blvd. PO Box 172720 Bozeman, MT 59717 -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "MuseumPests" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to pestlist+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/pestlist/MWHPR02MB3229B10FA7437A9E5B66212588789%40MWHPR02MB3229.namprd02.prod.outlook.com.
