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Autobiographical Information

THE SCIENCE PART

My interest in Nature and Entomology was the result of two major factors:

[1] The place I spent my childhood and [2] The inspiration of my parents. As a child, I lived in Louisiana, USA; a tropical location where arthropods (beetles, butterflies, spiders, etc.) abounded! Any lighted storefront or brightly lit service station, yielded countless numbers of moths, beetles, bugs and other insects, attracted to the lights from the nearby swamps and bayous! People who grow up in tropical locales encounter this “buggy” scenario throughout their lives, but are so used to it that they generally pay it little attention.

NOT SO WITH ME! I recall that as far back as 5 years old, the sight of a beautiful, huge, lime-green Luna Moth, flitting around a light pole in the Louisiana dusk, produced an acute excitement within me akin to the feeling a child has on Christmas morning! This “childlike wonderment” has never left me, and such occasions still cause me intense emotional instability, even at age 62!

My mother, Edith Marie Clark Whitten, a school teacher for 37 years, won many awards for her innovative teaching methods. Her classes were always enriched with “Natural History” materials, supplied by my father, Horace Logan Whitten, a chemist, taxidermist, and biologist; then manager of Waubun Laboratories (Carolina Biological Supply Company) in Schriever, Louisiana (60mi. south west of New Orleans). Our home, and my mother’s classrooms were regularly adorned with, to recall a few; human and other skeletons, a Komodo Dragon, a stuffed penguin from Admiral Byrd’s south pole expedition; numerous minerals, shells and fossils, as well as what was then the largest private collection of mounted birds in the eastern USA, including an extinct Carolina Paraqueet (since donated to the Smithsonian)!—all from my father’s personal collection of “everything imaginable or otherise”!

My brother, Tom (Thomas William Whitten) and I could scarcely walk around our environs, without running into the numerous trappings of the naturalist’s laboratory the aforementioned specimens (in the thousands), plus chemicals, laboratory apparatus, microscopes, nets, chemical balances but, most of all hundreds and hundreds of vials, jars and bottles of preserved creatures (including insects and spiders), not to mention the considerable “stock” of Carolina Biological specimens, processed at Waubun Labs., for classroom education (teaching Biology and Natural History), all over the world! Incidentally, I was later employed, part-time at Waubun from high school on--until I went to LSU; a good grounding in basic Biology, outside of the classroom! Meanwhile back to childhood.

After spending literally years receiving (and playing with) Lionel Electric Trains and associated equipment, I was given a Christmas gift which “changed my life”! That gift was MY FIRST MICROSCOPE!, It was, to me, nothing short of a miracle! I could see and explore other worlds which other people scarcely knew existed! I looked at Rotifers in dirty birdbath water Paramecium, Amoeba and Volvox in local ponds and, of course tiny Insects, UP CLOSE! I soon rigged up mirrors and lenses to allow projection of these minute creatures on my darkened bedroom wall and spent ages studying their myriad forms and marveling at them! I stopped anyone who happened by and INSISTED that they look through my microscope to view these wonders and was always saddened by the few who did not appear to share my unbridled ENTHUSIASM for these tiny miracles! Soon thereafter, I began to read about the planets and galaxies and HAD TO HAVE A TELESCOPE! Since I mowed the yard, painted the white picked fence (a la Tom Sawyer), and was gainfully employed around the house for various jobs, I was allowed to use such financial gains toward the purchase of MY FIRST TELESCOPE, a Criterion 4 and one half inch Neutonian Reflector! Now, I could not only see protozoa and bacteria but—Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Venus, the Moon and the Sun (by safely projecting it’s image on the white wall)! My life was immensely enriched and I could scarcely sleep at night with so much wonderment at my fingertips! “Normal” children and friends generally had little interest in my scientific undertakings and though they might occasionally humor me with a look through the microscope or telescope, they were really more interested in “playing fort, army, cowboys & Indians, having secret club meetings and eventually talking about and meeting girls!” I soon discovered Chemistry, due to the constant close proximity of laboratory chemicals, apparatus and books not to mention the receipt, the next Christmas of a Gilbert Chemistry Set! Again, I became TOTALLY ABSORBED in this amazing world of colored smoke, fireworks, disappearing and reappearing colored liquids, etc. but most of all the realization that there were CHEMICAL ELEMENTS and that they were related and somewhat understandable through the use of the PERIODIC CHART OF THE ELEMENTS which I soon managed to acquire! Now I had to try daily to accumulate all of the chemical elements I could and I soon had collected a significant number including such unusual ones as Mercury, Arsenic, Tellurium, and Cobalt. I was able to talk my grandfather (a pharmacist) out of some very valuable Platinum foil and my dentist out of some dental Gold! Silver was easy to get by flattening out some coins, as was Copper. My enthusiasm was such that my father helped me build a chemistry lab of my own in our garage (to replace the rattle-trap outdoor one I had constructed by myself out of junk wood and tin!) My new lab was beautifully equipped and eventually contained several hundred bottles of various chemicals, a chemical balance, Bunsen burners, hot plates, condensers, Florence flasks, Erlenmeyer flasks, Leibrigs condensers, titration tubes and every kind of clamp and ring stand I could lay my hands on! I won First Place in the local Science Fair with my project entitled, “Colors in Chemistry” which featured a glow in the dark, rotating Uranium Atom (made from pop beads & wire with a clock motor) and an array of fluorescent minerals/chemicals, etc.

THE ART & MUSIC PART

I must regress now to “catch up” on the more “normal-non scientific activities” that I shared with my family when I allowed myself to be separated from such “entomological, chemical, astronomical, and natural history obsessions”!

My family was very active in the Methodist Church (Houma, Louisiana), throughout my childhood and beyond. My mother taught Sunday School and my father was the Sunday School Superintendent. I sang in the choir with both parents and eventually became the regular church organist and vocal soloist. I had begun piano lessons years earlier (age 5), but found classical organ much more to my liking! By age 10, I was regularly playing Bach’s “Toccata & Fugue in E Minor” or any of the “Eight Little Preludes and Fugues” as the “recessional” for church!

During my early piano lesson period, it was noted that I looked much too closely at the music and a doctor’s examination revealed that I had acute Myopia (Nearsightedness). I was advised to stop piano for awhile but that playing the Bell Lyre in the school band would be ok, as looking at music closely was not required with such an instrument. This early exposure to the “bells” and other “Melodic Percussion” boded well for my future in all levels of school and college bands/orchestras; eventually resulting in my professional (musicians union) membership in the Baton Rouge Civic Symphony [tuxedo and all!], while an undergraduate at L.S.U. Had I auditioned to play a “normal” instrument like Trumpet, Clarinet, Flute, Violin, etc., I would have had to compete with numerous “better players”, but as I was “an enigma”, being able to play Glockenspiel, Celeste, Marimba, Piano, Organ, Xylophone, Vibraphone, Orchestra Bells, Tubular Chimes (any tuned melodic percussion instrument with a piano-keyboard note arrangement)); I was welcomed, almost without competition. Along the way I had learned most regular percussion instruments, like tympani and certain other drums but my favorite of all was the Cymbals! The drama of counting over 100 measures (in some cases) and then bombastically intruding on a quiet, pastoral orchestral segment with the resounding sfortzando cymbal crash on the first note of the immediately following March section, was always one of the great joys of my musical career! Likewise, playing and “twirling” the cymbals during The Star Spangled Banner in the “LSU Tiger Marching Band” on the 50 yard line during nationally televised football games was an awesome experience! More about this later!
I must again regress to early childhood, to introduce another of my lifelong passions, singing! At age 3, I often sang in various local food stores, for which I was given candy, etc. This was during the 2nd World War, so I sang such notable numbers as “Coming in on a Wing and a Prayer”, “I’m going to Spit right in the Fuhrerers Face”, and “Over There”!

At four, I sang “Silent Night”, from memory; all verses and in German, for church. In later years (Junior High), I regularly, to the disturbance of many people, immitated Mario Lanza singing “La Donne Mobile” and other operatic arias, for hours at a time! I went on to sing solos in church, for weddings, for funerals, for Masonic meetings, etc., etc. but best of all, sang the bass solos, with full orchestra, in various productions of Handel’s” Messiah”, for over 30 years! I also sang professionally (musicians union again) in The Portland Opera (Portland, Oregon) for 11 years. More about this later, also!

RETURN TO ENTOMOLOGY

Throughout my childhood, I carried a “butterfly net” around as if it were another appendage! I made daily trips to various “vacant lots” in my neighborhood to check on the progress of various caterpillars and their crysalids (cocoons). Passionflower vines in these lots, yielded a constant stream of Gulf Fritillary Butterflies, [Argalias vanillae], as well as Painted Lady Butterflies ,[Vanessa cardui] , Pipevine Swallowtails, [Battus philinor.], Spicebush Swallowtails, [Papilio trolius], and various Sulfurs, [Colias sp.] The Lemon and Orange trees in my yard were frequented by huge Giant Swallowtails, [Papilio glaucus] and the rarer Palamedes Swallowtails, [Papilio palamedes]. The pear trees, and rotten pears fallen on the ground in my back yard, yielded numerous Red Admirals, [Nymphalis admiralis], Hackberry Butterflies, [Nymphalis sp.] , Red Spotted Purples, [Nymphalis sp.], Commas, [Nymphalis comma], and Questionmarks, [Nymphalis interrogatus]. I still have many of these “original” specimens in my present museums, some with dates of 1946, captured when I was but 5 years old! I occasionally found the huge, leaf wrapped cocoons of giant Cecropia Moths, [Samia cecropia], Polyphemus Moths, [ Telea polyphemus], Royal Walnut Moths, [Citheronia regalis], Imperial moths, [Citheronia imperalis], and most beautiful of all, the fabulous lime green Luna Moths, [Actias luna ]! My “original” small collection managed to win a red (2nd place) ribbon at the local fair.

Over the years my interest in entomology waxed and waned; though I always managed to somehow care for the collection (adding moth balls regularly, etc.), even though I was not necessarily actively collecting and adding new specimens to the still small collection, over long periods. One of the oddest entomological scenarios was my collecting Zebra Swallowtails, [Graphium ajax] just outside the gates of the infamous Angola Penitentiary, in the surrounding northern Louisiana forest. My father rekindled my interest occasionally, by purchasing certain beautiful butterfly specimens (from Africa, Indonesia, etc.) for me on his frequent trips to New Orleans. I clearly recall all of such specimens he bought me, especially a huge, magnificently iridescent, Blue Morpho, [Morpho didius]! At LSU (Baton Rouge, La.) I took several Entomology courses as well as, closely related, Parasitology courses, though I was majoring in Chemistry and Biology and obtained a BS degree from LSU in same. A class in Medical Entomology at USL (Lafayette, La.) was especially interesting to me, and seemed far easier than the graduate course in Biochemistry! I also enjoyed the USL graduate classes in Mammalogy and Herpetology, which had some tangential relationship to Entomology. My encounter with collecting a “ not-yet-dead” Skunk as part of my “specimen collection” for the Mammalogy class is yet another amazing story which I will relate in a future CD!

Marriage, Graduate School, Career in Biology

During my final year at LSU (1963), I married Diane Tonia Davidson and our first child, Richard Horace Whitten Jr. was born the following year when I was at USL. The following year we moved to Burlington, North Carolina where I started my long employment with Carolina Biological Laboratories. Remember that my biologist father was manager of the Waubun Labs., southern branch of Carolina Biological so I wanted to continue the connection with Carolina. I was initially involved in the then “new” Film-Strip department, where I was Script-Writer on various biological topics and helped in the photography for same. I next became part of the Plast-o-mount dept., where I learned to imbed biological specimens in plastic for educational purposes. Soon thereafter I joined the Parasitology Slide dept., where I learned to prepare microscope slides of every imaginable parasite! The second year with Carolina, I was invited to train in the Invertebrate Culture Dept., for the possible upgrading to Dept. Head of that department at the Oregon branch (Powell labs).

I spent one year learning the very unusual (and difficult) procedures for culturing (growing) hundreds of species of freshwater protozoa, algae, nematodes, rotifers, hydra, planaria, daphnia, etc. I also became part of the Drosophila Culture dept., where I was in charge of growing over 100 mutants of Fruit flies, which were shipped to schools for use in genetics studies. After the two years of training at Carolina (Burlington, NC), the family moved to Gladstone (near Portland) Oregon where I became head of the Invertebrate Culture and Drosophila Culture Depts. there. A daughter, Loren Yvette Whitten, was born in Dec. 1966 and I was more than ever immersed in my work---mainly supplying many thousands of living cultures of all of the aforementioned species to educational institutions (from grade school to graduate school) to the entire western USA, Hawaii, and Alaska! The work also entailed the collecting of various species “in the field” which afforded me the opportunity to do insect collecting “ on the side” as well as for the lab. Both children often went with me on insect collecting trips from early childhood through their high school years and helped very significantly in amassing a valuable amount of “insect trading stock” for eventual exchange!. I joined various entomological clubs and organizations (both amateur and professional, through which I became friends with many others with similar interests. It was then possible to trade local specimens for exotic, foreign species, resulting in the eventual procurement of numerous specimens on a world-wide basis! Rick, Loren and I collected numerous common, local species (of the Pacific NW) and exchanged them for fantastic foreign species including giant beetles (Amazon), fabulous bird wing swallowtails (New Guinea), colossal moths (China-Indonesia)---and on and on! I met David Roubik, (a University of Oregon biology student) at an Oregon Entomological Society meeting, where he showed me giant scarab beetles, blue morpho butterflies and a variety of absolutely fabulous arthropod specimens ( which totally overwhelmed me) he had collected in Central America. He eventually became Dr. David Roubik of the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute in Panama and was eventually instrumental in causing my move to tropical Central America! As my collection grew, I began to give talks and to have exhibitions at various State Parks, schools, the Washington Park Zoo and the Oregon Museum of Science and Industry. I was often in newspapers and on TV to talk about “creepy crawlies” and particularly to be shown with live tarantula spiders crawling all over me! This particular scenario got me more publicity than anything I have ever done before or after! At Carolina Biological “science meetings” like the National Science Teachers Association, the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the American Association of Biology Teachers , I always did the “man with tarantulas crawling all over his body” routine with predictable spectacular results—including TV and Newspaper coverage (front page of “The Oregonian”).!

My musical “career” during this period ranged from playing the accordion at parties and playing the pipe organ as church organist for practically every religious denomination around (as well as for weddings & funerals) to singing the bass solos in various Messiah performances (yearly with orchestra, choir, etc.) and singing in the Portland Opera Chorus!

I loved the opera the most and I miss it the most now, as far as musical experiences go. I was able to meet such opera notables as Jerome Hinds, Roberta Peters, Wolfe Seigfried Wagner, James McCracken, and Beverly Sills (among many others) during my 11 years as a member the Portland Opera Chorus (Musicians Union and all!).

Remarriage on Halloween, More Music, More Work, More Bug Collectors!-

My marriage to Diane unfortunately came to an end and my life continued with both children and my work to keep me busy! I was, I suppose, a “work-aholic”; busy all week at the lab and attending science meetings on weekends. Add to this -the Church Organist/Soloist, Wedding/Funeral Organist/Soloist—Portland Opera Chorus—Lecturer at various societies/clubs, etc., Exhibitions at OMSI/Zoo, etc., and my life was full and varied, if not hectic! On one of my yearly trips for Carolina (Powell Labs.) to the Vancouver Science Teachers Convention in Canada, I met Margaret Reid Swan, a Radiographer , from Kirkcaldy, Fife, Scotland. Her science/medical/fashion design background and musical past history (member of Vancouver Light Opera and various professional choral groups like the Kinghorn Choir in the UK) boded well for our finding similar interests to explore. I was overwhelmed when told of her sleeping in castles in Scotland and she was excited that I had lived in an antebellum Plantation Home in Louisiana. We also both loved Rodgers and Hammerstein and the like. At any rate, we corresponded by mail for many months and eventually married on October 31, 1981. Her daughter, April (then age 7) quickly became a sister to Rick and Loren and our new family began on Halloween (the birthday of both my father, Horace and Houdini!). April and Margaret had always sung together (mainly in the bath) and Margaret was an accomplished pianist, so they both quickly joined the “Whitten musical experience” Rick playing Bass Trombone at Clackamas Community College and joined in the brass section of the “family band” with Loren and my brother Tom (Trumpets,) my father (Baritone Horn) and my uncle Dolphus (French Horn)! Loren taking voice lessons & singing in the Portland Opera Ensemble (which Margaret and I helped to found) and “the Father” variously musically involved. Eventually, Margaret and I sang together in several church and civic choirs as well as singing/acting in 27 performances of The Oregon Trail Pageant. Loren sang with me in the Opera “The Ballad of Baby Doe” and April performed with me in Portland Opera’s production of Turandot (she in the childrens chorus and I in the adult chorus). Margaret, Loren and I eventually traveled to NYC where Loren and I sang with Portland Opera in the new opera, Pamelia at Carnegie Hall (a once-in-a-lifetime experience!).

Needless to say, the addition of Margaret and April to my collecting entourage (of Rick and Loren) resulted in yet more insect specimens for the continually growing “bug” collection and for exchange! During that period I belonged to various insect societies (local and international) including The Entomological Society of America The Coleopterists’ Society (Beetles) The Lepidopterists’ Society (Butterflies and Moths The Oregon Entomological Society TIEG (Teen International Entomologist Group) The Phasmid Study Group (Walkingsticks) and many others; all groups with similar interests and contacts, which made it possible for me to exchange rare arthropod specimens from exotic locales for the common ones my family and I caught locally!

My wife Margaret states the following (regarding her entomological connections): “I married ‘the collection’ twenty one years ago when I found five hundred or so boxes of insects piled up in the family room of our “new home”. One of the reasons I married Richard was our passion for music.He performed in the Portland Opera chorus and I took part in choirs, amateur musicals and the Vancouver Light Opera Society. I knew that Richard had an insect collection but nothing prepared me for the enormity of it all! What to do with the many insect boxes was my immediate concern. The contents were great, of course, but, where to put them?! Then I realized we would have to build a special place and the breezeway between the house and garage proved to be the ideal area. Everyone who wanted to see the collection would have immediate access to it’s beauty and biodiversity. To highlight the new area Richard decided he would put up a decorative box or two on the wall space just to show off a bit of what was in the collection. Fifty four (54) large plexiglass display cases later, we definitely had the most impressive entomological entryway you could ever imagine!! How did we afford the beautiful boxes? The usual way Richard gets things he needs, but often lacks funds for He BARTERS for them! He traded some of his most unusual specimens (he had duplicates) to people at the plexiglass company who joyfully made him the beautiful, customized boxes in exchange for the fancy specimens! This is the story of his life, patience and persistence. You may still see these original boxes in all of our exhibit locations. It was not enough that I found places to showcase the boxes. I was expected to talk about “the bugs” and so I found myself telling all who would listen, young or old, my version of stories about the Whitten collection, a very different entomology tour and often quite unexpected in its content!

I hope that like I, you too will enjoy the beauty of the Whitten bugs (the majority of them!) and that you will begin to realize their importance, both esthetically and scientifically, in our world, as I have over the many years that I have lived with this unlikely collection of amazing creatures!

Hopefully, the, children look back on the insect collecting trips and the varied musical activities with the fondness and happiness of a time gone by, when families did many things together outdoors and when “singing around the piano/organ” was an “regular” pastime for all ages! We never ever went on any vacation without our butterfly nets and collecting jars!

Quit Jobs! Sold House! Left Family! oved to Costa Rica!

Upon invitation by my Smithsonian biologist friend Dr. David Roubik, I made several trips to Panama and to the tropical rain forests there. After experiencing the wonderment of the real tropics, which I had only glimpsed before on trips to tropical Vera Cruz, Mexico or read about in books, I was overwhelmed and “hooked” on such locations! I returned to cold, sunless, Oregon (the middle of the winter!) to my job at Carolina Biological (Powell Labs.), where I continued to look through the microscope interminably, growing Amoeba and other invertebrates with occasional looks out the window at the concrete parking lot, while dreaming of the tropics with fantastic tropical fruit, incredibly beautiful flowers, eternal sunshine, and most of all the wonderment of biodiverse tropical arthropods beyond imagining! The comparison was painful and disheartening! I kept Margaret awake most of the night for many nights lamenting my fate to live in this “northern” location when we could be experiencing the same adventure that Dave was in tropical America! She, thank goodness, showed interest and willingly accompanied me on a trip shortly thereafter, again to Dave’s locale and eventually to an outpost of the Cuna Indians in San Blas, Panama called Cuna Yala! There, we experienced the huge Elephant and Hercules beetles, the wonderfully luminescent “Cucuja” Fire beetles, the early morning roaring of Howler monkeys, spectacular tropical thunderstorms, and on and on!!!!!!!!! She loved it too!!!! We later met a German botanist/tropical flower grower, Thomas Weidenmann who was also visiting Cuna Yala and who invited us to visit his “garden paradise” in neighboring Costa Rica. We did, and were absolutely amazed at the acres of tropical palms, orchids, heliconids, bromeliads and other floral splendors spread out before us. We almost decided to move to Costa Rica then and there, but practicality intervened and we went back to Oregon. There, we told the family about our now passionate love for the tropics and of our desire to live there.They were, of course to join us, though the decision to go or stay was up to them. We proceeded to sell our home, quit our jobs and begin packing up the collection, a process, which involved many months of work as well as dealing with US and Costa Rican customs regarding the many rare species to be shipped! We moved to Costa Rica, without the children, who opted to stay, mainly due to romantic involvements which led to marriage for both Loren and Rick within the year. Once in Costa Rica we soon set up our first exhibition called Jewels of The Rain Forest in Santo Domingo, Heredia. This operated from 1992 until 1997 and hosted thousands of Costa Rican school children as well as thousands of international visitors and students. We next moved our exhibition to a beautiful “bed & breakfast” site near Grecia called Posada Mimosa (Martin and Tessa Borner), where we stayed from 1997 to 1998 when we moved the exhibition into Grecia proper, with connections to “Fundacion Fundema” a local conservation foundation. From 1998 to 1999 we set up our exhibition in the very hot, humid San Mateo, Orotina area of Costa Rica at the finca of Sergei and Maude Condrachof. During one of the numerous Elderhostel tourist visits to our exhibition, we met with Sr. Alvaro and Maria Batalla who asked us to move to their beautiful cloud forest Hotel Chalet Tirol site, north of Heredia in Monte de La Cruz. We moved there in 1999 and stayed “ on campus” at the Tirol until 2003.

Our present exhibition site is in a spectacular cloud forest called Selvatura (Mario Solano) which abuts both the famous Monteverde and Santa Elena cloud forests. This site has spectacular “hanging bridges”, incredible forest trails, exciting zip line canopy tours, hummingbirds /tropical flowers galore and our “Richard Whitten’s Jewels of The Rain Forest”exhibition. The acres of pristine tropical forest are the ideal location for me to continue my exploration and digital videography/photography! Come to Selvatura and visit our remarkable BIO-ART Exhibition and meet me, Margaret, the dogs (Mozart and Toby) and the cat (Musicat)! It will be an experience of a lifetime you will not soon forget!

Bio-Art Exhibits:

Since Margaret and I both have a family history of MUSIC and ART in addition to our interest in NATURE, we have always attempted to present our Entomological exhibits in a unique format which reflects all three of these aspects. Unlike the “traditional” presentation of insects in rows with labels on pins, we have chosen to show many of the specimens in GEOMETRIC PATTERNS, STAR BURSTS and SWIRLS along with special lighting and Classical Music. Furthermore, we have added PHOTOS and DESCRIPTIVE PARAGRAPHS in many displays to offer the observer PAINLESS EDUCATION so that they enjoy the beauty, music, and ambience yet they LEARN without really being aware of the educational part.

We call these exhibits BIO-ART. The first section of the photos in this CD is dedicated to the history of our exhibitions and shows numerous displays in the BIO-ART format as well as many examples of every type of display we have created and shown in our exhibitions over a 15 year period. There are photos of both of us teaching school children, the museum, on TV, visits by Elderhostel and other Tourist groups Margaret and me working on displays, etc.

Descriptive Educational Exhibits :


The second section of the photos in this CD shows a variety of exhibits
with theaforementioned educational content. Many include photos to augment the displayed material as well as to magnify tiny, difficult to see, specimens. There are also occasional diagrams to aid in one’s understanding of the THEME which is being presented. The photos are generally clear enough to permit your reading of the descriptive paragraphs in each exhibit as well as the large TITLE at the center top of each display. I have included such topics as Protective Coloration and Shape, Camouflage, Parasitism, Color Production, Dangerous and Beneficial Arthropods, Anatomy, Taxonomy, Insect & Arthropod Identification Keys, Arthropod Families,Insect Families, Beetle Families, Silk Moth Production, Crustacea, Spiders, Scorpions, Millipedes, Centipedes, etc. I have also included photos of some specimens taken from the Masters Thesis Collection of my father, Horace Logan Whitten, during the years 1940-41 at the University of Texas at Austin. Most are of Crustaceans from the Gulf of Mexico off the coast of Texas and Louisiana, USA. I was born during this period, on January 16, 1941 (Glade Water, Texas), in the midst of this research!

Other Aspects of Whitten Museum Collections
Besides the previously discussed museum exhibits, the Whitten Collection includes numerous “Cornell Drawers” of “properly” pinned and labled arthropod specimens, in the “correct, generally accepted” format. These, however, are not usually on exhibit, but are always available to serious students, researchers, or others who “have not yet seen enough BUGS” in the regular display areas! There are also cabinets housing many preserved specimens (often very small or fragile forms) in vials of alcohol, mainly for study under the dissecting microscope. The designation of “over one million Arthropods” in the Whitten Collection, reflects the vast numbers of fleas, ticks, tiny spiders, tiny beetles, tiny flies, thrips, and other “micro-arthropods” contained in these very many jars and vials---in addition to the vast numbers of “regular-sized” specimens in the (55 years +) private arthropod collection!