Preparation

The most simple preparation with single specimen, single species, single label.

In this database, a single "preparation" has been assigned as the unit of the database. "Preparation" means the physical unit of the container inside which the specimens kept. The standard preparation contains a single specimen of a single species. However there are many preparations which contain more than two specimens or two species for various reasons.

The preparations are usually tagged by a single label which describes the nature of the specimen. There are, also, some multi-labeled preparations because of the re-curating activities.

Multi-specimens preparation can show the life stages.

Multi-specimens of single species: The preparation representing different varieties, like the difference between male and female, the one including life stages or the one with different view angles, contains more than two specimens. Each specimen has been identified and stored in the same container with a single label. However, sometimes it will be necessary to check if every specimen belongs to the same species or not.

Sepia elegans egg preparation on Antozoan body.

Multi-specimens and Multi-species: Some organisms live on other host organisms. In this case, the preparation contains more than two species in the container. However, the label shows mainly the name of the target organism with/without a small amount of information about the hosting organism.

Corynidae (HYD176) contains 10 different preparations.

Multi-preparations in single container: There are still many preparations which have not yet been curated. Those are stored in tentative containers that are labeled with several names or an upper taxon's name. In this database, we have registered the mixed container as a single preparation. If there is enough information to recognize each preparation individually in a mixed container, we also registered each specimen as a separate preparation.

In particularly, the Lo Bianco Collection ( 115 preps) contains various kinds of preparations representing the fish life stages. Each container contains at least 10 unlabeled preparations with the note of taxonomic information. Thus, the final number of preparations belonging to Lo Bianco Collection will be more than 1000, after future re-curation.

Sepia elegans egg preparation on Antozoan body.

Microscopic Preparations: Microscopic preparations are stored in slide containers and the containers stored in a box. In this database, we have labeled each slide container as a unit preparation. Since each conainer contains more than 10 - 20 slides, the final number of the microscopic preparation will reach 5,000.