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TRICHOPTERA OF SUFFOLK
THE TRICHOPTERA OF SUFFOLK THE MORLEY COLLECTION AND POST MORLEY RECORDS ADRIAN CHALKLEY Introduction Many a local museum holds important collections which are little known to the general public. The Ipswich Museum is no exception and many local people, whilst enjoying the many exhibits, little suspect that behind the scenes, up a dusty, winding staircase lies a room smelling of mothballs lined with mahogany cabinets full of pinned invertebrate specimens; which is heaven to an aging entomologist like me. Several of the cabinets hold the collections of Claude Morley, the founder of the Suffolk Naturalists’ Society. Morley published several monographs in his lifetime, with titles such as ‘The Coleoptera of Suffolk’, many of which are now obtainable from the ISSUU pages of the Suffolk Naturalists’ Society (Morley, 1899). However, no such publication exists to detail his collection of caddis flies, Trichoptera. The aim of this article is therefore three-fold; to describe the scope of his collection at the museum, provide additional data to bring Morley’s work up to date and thus provide a species list for Suffolk, as far as is presently known. I began to catalogue the Morley collection in November 2007 and continued at intervals until April 2009. Having been recording mainly larval Trichoptera for several years, I had begun to get an idea of which species were common or rare in Suffolk and wanted to see what Morley had found in his time. Although the whole collection had been previously checked and verified by an expert, unfortunately no list of the specimens had been produced for the museum, due I think to illness, so this was the task I began. Work was further complicated by the fact that Morley, as many local naturalists will know, did not always label specimens clearly. Often the collecting location is considerably abbreviated, necessitating further research; or worse still simply coded by a small piece of coloured card, with no key. His handwriting can also confuse matters. The catalogued data was sent to Ian Wallace, the National Trichoptera Recorder, which resulted in some further research on certain specimens at intervals up to November 2015. Ian has recently completed a reappraisal of the British Trichoptera Fauna (Wallace, 2016) and so it seemed high time that all these data were set out here in the SNS Transactions. Firstly, I must thank Ian Wallace for his generous help over several years and for permission to use the species descriptions from his recent review. My gratitude is also due to the Ipswich Museum management and especially to various past staff for putting up with me, including Jerry Bowdrey, Anne Ainsworth, Molly Carter and the current Natural History Curator Kathryn Riddington. The Morley Collection Morley collected only pinned adult specimens, several of which were obtained in the pre Beeching era from railway waiting rooms and toilets. Whilst waiting for his train Morley always found these convenient places to find adult caddis attracted by the lights from the evening before. He also collected by beating from undergrowth, netted flying caddis over ponds, streams or moats and used purpose made light traps Trans. Suffolk Nat. Soc. 53 (2017)