Hi,

you can see here

http://www.fws.gov/alaska/gem/collectArchive_Preservation.htm

serge

Thank you, Serge!

I found Serge's page to be very helpful but noted that it suggests putting hair samples in silica desiccant but I couldn't tell if this meant putting the desiccant crystals inside the envelope or putting the desiccant packet in a box with the envelopes.  Check with your genetics lab too, the one we use did not want desiccant loose in the sample envelopes. In Florida, we've had relatively high success rate collecting hair samples each week (we found 14 days in the field reduced success) and putting hair in coin envelopes with the envelopes stored in an air conditioned building (usually stored in the paper-board box in which they were purchased). I've looked into desiccant but we have not used it, just the conditioned air.

Dear Brian,

I think the advice was meant to use desiccant outside the sample envelops. 

Also, do you archive samples in your lab for longer periods (years) or do you you process them molecularly within some time frame?

Thanks for your feedback.

Sorry for the VERY late reply, guess I didn't see the alert to this discussion.  Sorry.  If it's still needed, or helps someone else, we do archive many of our samples this way (those from nuisance captures rather than specific research projects) but I don't have data on how successful these older samples were since we have only used the archived ones a few times.

Thank you for your response, Brian.

I concur with Brian's suggestions, but have one additional recommendation related to desiccant: I typically stor hair samples in paper coin envelopes and then store groups of envelopes in air-tight containers (eg, Rubbermaid, etc) with desiccant. DNA amplification success rates for projects in which desiccant was used have always been >70%.