Hi Milan

What happened to Aforia? Have you joined the list?

>I have a question regarding drying of alcohol-stored specimens.
>
>I searched the archives and found lots of info on how to store molluscs in
>alcohol properly,
>but almost nothing about how to dry them.
>
>I have some tiny shelled gastropods from hydrothermal vents. They are all
>stored (say  4-5 years) in alcohol (70% ethanol, I think). I would like to
>dry some of them but don't know how  to do it properly.
>The problem is that shells (not perio!) tend to crack very badly during the
>drying (Naturaly, it always happen with rare specimens) This is probably due
>to tensions caused by contraction of animal tissue.
>
>I guess that  dilution of alcohol (by gradual adding of water) would prevent
>cracking during the drying. But soft tissue would began to decay then,
>wouldn't it?
>
>I don't want to extract the animal, I want to keep it dry inside the shell.
>Any suggestions how to this without losing the hard parts?

It may be possible to transfer them into formalin (in fact I'm sure
that this is possible) Left there, the formalin should reoplace the
ethanol; then the specimen could be dried. Formalin-fixed proteins
supposedly will not decay.

However slow drying would mean that shrinkage-produced tensional
stresses on the shell will be slowly introduced... however they will
reach the same shell-snapping pull as fast drying; it will merely
take longer.

I would suggest careful removal of the animal for separate and
continued wet storage in ethanol.

I assume you want to dry your Lepetodrilus. Or do you have Provanna
as well now? Got any Clypeosecta??
--
Regards
Andrew