Alcohol Hand Gel Mounts

This is in no way original, but I want to document use of alcohol hand gel as a temporary mounting method for springtails. Alcohol hand gel is readily available in supermarkets and chemists. There are many different brands but choose a colourless one containing 70% alcohol (which although not stated, I think is isopropanol?). You probably won't be able to find a brand without perfume, so you're going to smell nice (?) after using it! Buy the cheapest you can find (always a guiding principle). The full list of ingredients of the one I use is: alcohol (isopropanol?), water, glycerin, acrylates/alkyl acrylate crosspolymer, perfume, triethanolamine, aloe barbadensis extract, phenoxyethanol. There's a lot of other stuff in there in addition to the alcohol, but the extra gloop turns out to be useful. Put a springtail (or other small insect) on a clean microscope slide and put a drop of the gel on top, then a coverslip. The gel and the coverslip allows you to roll the specimen around to see the features you want - an advantage of the gel consistency. I am able to get very good resolution of specimens mounted in this way, including being able to resolve manubrial teeth and macrosetate insertion points, something I have not been able to resolve using other methods. I have also taken specimens from the gel and then cleared them or put them back into 70% alcohol for storage without any problems, so I would definitely recommend a bottle of hand gel in your springtail kit. I have tested whether sealing the edges of the mount with clear nail varnish can be used to make permanent or semi-permanent mounts. This seems to work for 24-48 hours but after that the specimen deteriorates and after a week at room temperature the gel has gone cloudy and the specimen is mush, so these are really temporary mounts. Examples:

Isotoma viridis in alcohol hand gel:


Click for larger image

Heteromurus nitidus in alcohol hand gel:


Click for larger image