I have a fairly large collection of buprestids from Connecticut. Most of them are one of about 6 or 7 species, with smaller numbers of rarer species. So I'm wondering, what interesting things can you do with that many individuals of one species? They are all pinned and labeled.
There would be a bit of morphological variation, the question is what it can be linked to. Connecticut is rather small, so no genetic variation by distance. Also climate fairly uniform, so no climatic envelope work. If there is good geographic coverage and detailed habitat information, then maybe some habitat specificity work? If the collection also covers a good time span, then maybe also habitat transformation or fire events?
The assessment of the extent and pattern of variability (differences between sexes, influence of host-plants if you have reared material, &c.) and perhaps phenology may be of great interest by itself, and relatively small area of origin may be an advantage in interpretation (eliminating the influence of geographical trends). Anyway, exact published description of variability of a population may then serve as a basis for various comparisons (either done by yourself or by others - even years later) with other populations (or with the same population changed in time). Generally it is difficult to say what exactly can be done with your material by anybody else: it depends upon many particularities unknown to us (which species you have in greater numbers? how many specimens? both sexes well represented or - as is common with buprestids - only one predominating? what kind of ecological data are available? have you easy possibility to compare your material with that of other museum or private collections?, and last but not least what are your personal interests?
Good luck!
Roman
Personally I would take different measurements on the specimens and, if you have a wide temporal range (e.g. 50-100 years) maybe could be possible to test for effect of climate change on beetle size/morphology. If you do not have such a large temporal window, you could maybe test for difference in size/morphology as a function of date of collection within the year (e.g. month) and try to relate such variation in temperature variation across months. Additionally, I also think as the other commenting collegues that an analysis of the links between morphology and local habitat of collection sites could be a very interesting thing to do, too. Best, Carlo
In the best of worlds you have many specimens from all parts of the state covering the last 50 to 100 years. At least some of these ideas have been proposed in other answers.
For all species has there been a general trend in body size. Environmental stress or global warming should produce a general pattern (that may or may not be strong enough to detect from background noise).
Is there habitat partitioning. Species 1 is coastal, while Species 2 is not. Or, are some species associated with soil type, or some other geographic feature.
How about looking at species composition of different watersheds. Species 1 is found in watershed 1 and 4, but not 2 or 3.
Has relative abundance of the different species changed? This could be a natural cycle, or from human disturbance.
Are there weather patterns that favor one species over another? The wet years from 1967 through 1969 favored Species 1 over the usually more abundant Species 2.
If you have vegetation maps, maybe you can hypothesize that plant 1 is a preferred host for buprestid 1 while buprestid 2 prefers plant 4.
Seasonality. If you want to collect buprestid 1 then you need to be sampling from June 22 through August 3 with a peak abundance on July 4. It will help in this sort of model if you used degree days rather than calendar date. I would use 10 degrees C as the lower developmental threshold. While this is probably not the ideal value, the error will be consistent. You can then back-transform the degree day outcome to an approximate date range. See:
Conference Paper Diversity, abundance, and phenology of Macrolepidoptera in W...
Roman Holynski has given imp comments already...
my comment is simple: If you cannot devote time to the kind of assessment that Roman and others have suggested....donate to an institution where people can do that
best wishes
hvg
Dear Dr. Rutledge,
If sample locations vary in some ecological parameters (e.g. availability of food resources) it will be interesting if you measure FA (Fluctuating asymmetry) of hind wings (or other symmetric body parts). FA is the widely used indicator of population stress and developmental instability. Then you can investigate whether the FA level correlates with some ecological parameters.
Sincerely,
Jakub
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