Back

@futurebird
some plankton are tiny arthropods. But there are many other kinds of plankton not closely related to arthropods (or to each other), diatoms, radiolarians, algae, cyanobacteria, so many more I don't know anything about.

I don't know if anyone has done any equivalent to the "deathfog a dozen different species of trees, see how many new insects fall out, use that to estimate total insect diversity" experiments for plankton.

@llewelly @futurebird Why do we still have to kill creatures just to know that they exist?

@kechpaja @llewelly

I was saddened by the insect deaths that are used to catalog species, however if you are proposing trying to just photograph them all ... well. We'd probably only know about half of the insects we do now.

I assume most people who study insects like them and wouldn't kill a few 100 without it making good progress. And these death traps are nothing in comparison to the territory and environmental destruction that kills in the tens of millions.

@futurebird @kechpaja @llewelly This was true in the past but seems silly today. Capture, high res photogrammetry, release should be trivial.

@dalias @kechpaja @llewelly

Also, and I didn't believe this until I got serious about learning to identify ants, even the very best photographs do not have the detail of a pinned specimen. This is because we are talking about a very complex three-dimensional form. You have a few excellent macro photos but not one of them lets you see the mandibles from behind, or the leg at the angle required.

I now "get" why a holotype has to be a dead bug. Because you often need to go back and look again.

@futurebird @kechpaja @llewelly That's why I said photogrammetry. It's taking thousands of photographs from all angles and deriving a 3D model.

@dalias @kechpaja @llewelly

*grumbling*

we willl see I suppose

But don't you need the bug to be dead to make that kind of model in the first place?

Trying to get insects to hold still so they can be documented goes way back.... including this incident in 1665 where Hooke got an ant drunk.

https://sauropods.win/@futurebird/111354626144207007

I hope no one ever dips me in brandy so they can draw me under over-bright harsh lights...

@futurebird @kechpaja @llewelly I'd do it with an array of high speed camera sensors (cheap nowadays) on a rapidly spinning gimbal setup where the whole capture would be done in a few microseconds.

@dalias @futurebird @kechpaja
I'd like to know how practical it would be to do thousand-angle photogrammetry with *every* insect in a huge tree that has tens of thousands of insects in it, and then go on to do it for dozens trees, on the budget of a taxonomist, rather than a techno fantasy budget. (I've read microscopic photogrammetry is now being used a lot in mite taxonomy, but they seem not to have the kinds of rigs that can do it fast enough to avoid having to immobilize the specimens.)

@llewelly @futurebird @kechpaja Yeah the key is high speed.

@dalias @llewelly @kechpaja

Could one design a box that could be clamped over a small creature and it would do the lighting and photos from all angles all in one go?

Or a box one could drop an insect into that would do such a multi-angle, perfectly lighted scan?

When I'm doing wild ant photography I tend to set up some bait and light it well, then hope the ants move into focus.