Body size data for insect specimens - feeding damaged or not

One drawer of specimens in the Kenelm W. Philip collection, currently held at the University of Alaska Museum Insect Collection, that had obvious signs of dermestid damaged specimens was used. This drawer had exuvia of dermestid larvae, feeding detritus, and obvious holes chewed in specimens, and contained 366 dried, pinned insect specimens of various sizes and insect taxa (misc. orders, specimens thought to have been collected by Frohne or at least part of Frohne’s collection). Size measurements of each were taken from the front of the head (not including mandibles, palps, or antennae) to the end of the abdomen (not including cerci, ovipositor, etc.) using digital calipers in millimeters to the nearest one-tenth of a millimeter for specimens over 3mm and using an ocular micrometer to the nearest tenth of a millimeter using a Leica M165C stereomicroscope for specimens under 3mm. Specimens were examined under magnification using this Leica microscope for direct evidence of chew marks or holes left by dermestids. If a specimen was missing its head or abdomen the size measurement was estimated to account for the lost body part. Specimens with broken body parts but no evidence of dermestid feeding were considered not feeding damaged (specimens can become broken from a variety of non-dermestid causes). Each measurement was assigned to one of two groups: specimen feeding damaged or specimen not feeding damaged. The smallest specimens might get eaten entirely, leaving very little evidence, and thus be unavailable for measuring – possibly biasing the results towards an overabundance of specimens too large to eat entirely. The drawer had 12 pins with labels but missing specimens, ten of which were pointed specimens. To account for these potentially feeding damaged and small, but missing specimens, we added 12 randomly generated size values between 1 – 5 mm to the damaged data (generated using the R command runif(12, min=1, max=5)).