Manual Of Insect Anatomy In Lab

George Campbell Eickwort (1949–1994) at Cornell University saw a time of great research and teaching in insect morphology at the end of the Twentieth Century, most of which came from the efforts by two extraordinary systematists: and. Brown was the premier ant systematist of his time. His publications on ant taxonomy exude his masterly grasp on morphology, and he supervised a multitude of students doing dissertations on basic comparative anatomy for the group. Two excellent examples are Thomas Eisner’s 1957 work on the proventriculus and Gotwald’s 1967 detailed work on mouthparts. Eickwort main research focused on sweat bees, but as a teacher he was responsible for the course on insect morphology that covered all insects groups plus relevant outgroups.

Sadly, by the end of the 1990’s both men had died. Eickwort course was legendary. I know of students pursuing PhDs on other prominent universities, like Harvard, that spend one semester at Cornell just to take this course. The main part of it consisted on laboratory practices that gave students direct experience with morphology while at the same time it introduced basic techniques on dissection, microscopy and drawing.

Manual Of Insect Anatomy In Labor

Basic insect anatomy

The last of these is essential for understanding morphology: drawing forces you to truly look at the details of the structure under analysis. Eickwort’s laboratory manual was compiled and it is available on the web as a series on pdf’s but see update below. This is the version of the course I took during my graduate student years at Cornell.

Manual Of Insect Anatomy In Lab

Anatomy Lab Manual Pdf

It is a great teaching resource. Oh, and the drawing in the cover is by yours truly.

Update March 6, 2012. The link to Eickwort’s manual went dead at some point after this post was originally written, reflecting the very sad fact that Cornell University no longer offers a course in insect morphology. Since then, I have received a few requests from people wanting to get a hold on this teaching resource. I am therefore hosting the manual here for the nostalgic folks who still think insect morphology is worth learning (I personally think so, but I also like fountain pens and use a film camera from time to time): Notes.