Hello, folks. I thank you for your patience as I try to regain some normalcy with my loved ones after the Camp Fire. As the collecting season in the northern hemisphere winds up I'm feeling renewed motivation to explore, create, modify, repurpose, and improve all things entomological. In the last six months I've tried some ideas, scrapped others, and learned a lot along the way. I'm excited to share my accomplishments and thoughts with all of you. I also look forward to hearing from people who want to share their perspectives of and approaches to entomology in general. Again, thank you for coming and I hope something you find on this humble website is useful.

Best,
Brennen Dyer

I was planning to work on this site extensively this winter. However, the Camp Fire almost took my spouse's life, then destroyed my house and hometown. As I write this, not all of my family members are accounted for. I'm putting development on hold while I build a new life with my loved ones. Rest assured that this site will not be abandoned. I just need to focus on my family. Thank you to all who have encouraged and supported my effort to spread knowledge.

Sincerely,
Brennen Dyer

I'm currently researching website design principles and will be refining the website accordingly. Having a minimalist design is important to me, but until now I've been building this site instinctively. Changes on the horizon are likely adjustments to the mobile navigation menu, site graphics, and maybe reorganizing the desktop navigation bar. None of these will be major and are meant to augment the current design and mission. 

I've completed a new guide that's about using field notes to record your collecting events and using field numbers to associate specimens with more detailed data, which is under Tips, Guides, and Resources. Lynn Kimsey kindly reminded me about the follies of leaving field numbers on specimens instead of putting proper labels on them, which was a very helpful addition. I hope the guide is helpful, and feel free to leave comments or email me with feedback.

Jeff Smith has contributed a huge guide on making Cal Academy style drawers from scratch. I adapted what he gave me in a somewhat systematic nature, but my reproduction of it might be a little rough around the edges. I may revisit it if I have time between working on other areas of the site, and I'd appreciate any feedback on that page. I'm hugely grateful to him for documenting his work and sharing it with me.

I've put together two guides: mantis curation (by Lohit Garikipati), and one about labels (locality, field number, and determination labels). They will no doubt be improved over time, but feel free to take a look at those and critique them. I'm planning to do the guides about pinning blocks and making a personal database, and everything that entails, in the coming weeks as time permits.

Thank you, Lohit, for sharing your advice for curating mantises.

I have many protopages constructed but I don't have any finished yet. Stay tuned for content and revised graphics.