120 Years in 120 Objects

Join the KwaZulu-Natal Museum in celebrating the museum’s 120^th year of orbiting the sun. Staff and guest curators have chosen one object or item per year of our existence to highlight to the public. Visit the website and our social media platforms regularly to see the latest object and keep an eye out for information about a physical exhibition later this year!

Today’s Object is from 2001

The Winter Fly by Mandisa Ndlovu, Research Technician in Natural Sciences

As most people have noticed, winter is not a great time for adult insects, they are much more common in summer. There are a variety of reasons for this. In KwaZulu-Natal, colder temperatures and dry weather are the main drivers. Insects don’t disappear in winter, they are still present as eggs, larvae or pupae, we just don’t notice them as much. Some insects have evolved to be active in winter, a tough time for them but a time with little competition, making the activity worthwhile.

Edenophorus hiemalis, a species of Dance fly (Empididae) is one of these oddities. The holotype was collected by Bradley Sinclair in 2001 in the Karkloof (Benvie Farm, KwaZulu-Natal). The Latin name hiemalis meaning “of winter”, in reference to the season in which the holotype was collected. The specimen is housed in the KZN Museum along with 25 other specimens of the same species.

The Family Empididae is a large group of Diptera consisting of approximately 4300 species. The family has many predatory flies, including a few flower-visiting taxa. Adults inhabit riparian forest and can be found on leaves, tree trunks, aquatic vegetation, or in stream beds and seepage habitats. Some taxa are associated with more open areas such as fields, marshes, coastal zones and beaches. Adults capture various arthropod prey, including small to medium sized Diptera, Homoptera, Hemiptera, Thysanoptera, Lepidoptera, Trichoptera, Hymenoptera, Neuroptera, Ephemeroptera, Plecoptera, Coleoptera, Collembola, and Acari.

Being predators, they not only need to overcome the winter conditions themselves, but also rely on some prey insects being active through winter as well.

Edenophorus hiemalis collected in 2001 (Image by Kirstin Williams)

Edenophorus hiemalis collected in 2001 (Image by Mandisa Ndlovu)

120 Years in 120 Objects

Join the KwaZulu-Natal Museum in celebrating the museum’s 120^th year of orbiting the sun. Staff and guest curators have chosen one object or item per year of our existence to highlight to the public. Visit the website and our social media platforms regularly to see the latest object and keep an eye out for information about a physical exhibition later this year!

Today’s Object is from 1913

Giant of the cemetery, the oldest earthworm specimen in the collection (Geogenia caementerii) by Thembeka Nxele, Curator of Oligochaeta

This is the oldest specimen in the Natural Sciences collections. It was collected in 1905 by E. Warren who sent it overseas to a German zoologist, Wilhelm Michealsen, for identification because there was no expertise in the country at that time. In 1913, Michaelsen described the specimen as a new variation of Microchaetus papillatus (var. caementerii), which Plisko later transferred to Geogenia. Warren collected this species from St. Peter’s Churchyard in Pietermaritzburg. More specimens of this species have been collected from the cemetery yards around Pietermaritzburg in recent years. During a funeral at Thembeni cemetery, one specimen of G. caementerii showed up and because of its big size, people started saying it must be an ancestor of the dead because how can such a big earthworm be in the cemetery!

The earthworm collection at the KZN Museum is the largest on the continent and play a vital role in understanding soils and soil ecology in the region. Though there was no resident expert when this specimen was collected, we now have in house research and are leaders in this field.

Photo taken from: http://pdfpublish.co.za/uploaded/CathedralOfTheHolyNativity.pdf

Geogenia caementerii (in the original bottle and original name)

120 Years in 120 Objects

Join the KwaZulu-Natal Museum in celebrating the museum’s 120^th year of orbiting the sun. Staff and guest curators have chosen one object or item per year of our existence to highlight to the public. Visit the website and our social media platforms regularly to see the latest object and keep an eye out for information about a physical exhibition later this year!

Today’s Object is from 1935

Rock art rendering by Mary Young by Ghilraen Laue, Curator of Special Collections

The above copy from Game Pass shelter is one of many copies, made by Mary Young, housed in the KwaZulu-Natal Museum’s collections. The copies were only accessioned into the collections in the 1980s, but there is evidence that there were donated to the museum in the early 1970s or before. The only information that was originally included with the tracings and copies is that they were made in the 1930s by John and Mary Young. Through some detective work we have managed to find out more information. Comparisons with handwriting on the tracings and old letters confirms that the copies were the work of Mary Young.

Mary Margaret Young (née Gay) was born in London in 1898. When she was a young woman a doctor found a spot on her lung and recommended a change in climate. She moved to Pietermaritzburg, South Africa, and loved it. In the 1930s she married John Young. They both had an interest in archaeology and a love of nature. They spent many weekends hiking in the Drakensberg, where it seems Mary Young traced rock art images at various sites while her husband collected and recorded stone artefacts. Mary Young’s work is an early example of direct tracing of rock art, rather than free hand copies, which were more common at the time. She strove for accuracy in both the shape and the colours of the images. She died in Pietermaritzburg in 1971.