Insect expert David Pryce to join Perth Museum

Oct 19 2010 by Alison Anderson, Perthshire Advertiser Tuesday

PERTH Museum and Art Gallery has appointed a new entomology officer.

David Pryce, an experienced entomologist (insect expert), joins the staff at the George Street museum to take up the new post, which has been funded by the Esmée Fairbairn Foundation.

He will be applying his expertise to the museum’s Francis Buchanan White collection of hemiptera (true bugs), focusing on publicising and cataloguing the varied and valuable specimens within it.

Francis Buchanan White founded the Perthshire Society for Natural Sciences in 1867. His collection of butterflies, moths, beetles and true bugs forms the core part of the museum’s collection of insects and is of national significance.

In addition to collecting from Perthshire and other locations in Scotland, Frances Buchanan White also wrote to other naturalists around the world and added many foreign specimens to the collection.

True bugs are a very diverse group of insects and the most familiar types are shield bugs, plant hoppers, aphids, whitefly and water boatmen. There are more than 1700 species in the UK, with more than 450 in Scotland and 320 recorded from Perthshire.

All true bugs have sucking mouthparts which they use to feed on plant sap or, in some cases, animal blood (the bed bug is a true bug). While some species are garden pests there are many more that do little or no harm.

The collection of true bugs at Perth Museum and Art Gallery contains more than 10,000 specimens, with approximately two-thirds of these from abroad. It contains several type specimens, which are reference specimens selected when the species was first described and are extremely important scientifically.

Some of the exotic specimens in the collection are spectacular and a significant number of these come from the tropics. A large amount of material was collected by John Trail, who was professor of botany at Aberdeen University and went on an expedition to Brazil in 1874-75.

Some of the most important examples the museum owns were collected by Alfred Russell Wallace in South-East Asia. Wallace is most famous as co-proposer of the theory of evolution with Charles Darwin.

Although David Pryce has not worked on true bugs before, he is an acknowledged expert on dragonflies and damselflies. He has been on several expeditions to collect specimens to countries including Australia, Belize and Cameroon.

“Working on this collection will be a real challenge,” he said.

“In addition to cataloguing the collection and determining which specimens are the most important, we plan to research its history and bring together all the relevant material to tell the story of its creation.”