Welcome to the Zoology Department Arthropod Collections

The Field Museum's Division of Insects houses worldwide collections of Arthropoda (excluding Crustacea) ranking fifth in overall size among North American collections. The collection currently includes approximately 4.1 million pinned insects and 7.3 million specimens or lots of insects and other arthropods in alcohol or on microscope slides. The collection receives heavy use by US and international visitors and borrowers. Several existing off-line collection databases are being converted into the museum's KE EMu collection management software and made newly available online here, and data will continue to be added. The data now or soon to be available are:

• specimen catalogs of our bat flies, lice, Lepidoptera from the Strecker Collection, millipedes, scorpions, and types of other non-mite arachnids
• species-level inventories with specimen counts of the beetle families Staphylinidae, Silphidae, Histeridae, Sphaeritidae, Synteliidae, Carabidae, and of Lepidoptera and Diptera;
• species-level inventories with unit tray counts for other insect orders; and the
• bulk sample collection.

Creation of the original databases was heavily supported by National Science Foundation grants, some of which are continuing to support data entry and/or database development: DEB-8814449, A. F. Newton & J. B. Kethley; DEB-8906825, A. F. Newton; DEB-9527968, A. F. Newton & M. K. Thayer; DEB-9712438, P. Sierwald & W. A. Shear; DEB-9702824, J. W. O. Ballard; DEB-0118749, M. K. Thayer & A. F. Newton; DEB-0529715, P. Sierwald et al.; DBI-0545051, C. W. Dick et al.; DEB-0515672 & DEB-0618503, J. D. Weckstein & J. M. Bates. Conversion of Insects' data to KE EMu was partially funded by NSF DBI-0545051 and by the Institute of Museum and Library Services' support for Common Ground, IMLS CM-00-05-0050-05.

Some of our collections, because of their size and scope, are represented by species-inventory data (taxa present, some with specimen counts and indication of types) rather than specimen-level label data. We are continually upgrading and adding to both kinds of data and will gladly receive corrections or updated classification details. More information about the data is provided on the base page for each of the collection segments listed, and more information on the collection itself is available through the Division of Insects.

The Quick Browse options on the right provide access to the following sets of our data:

• All Arthropod Collections - The entire Division of Insects specimen and inventory database (including groups not listed below).
• Lepidoptera - Specimen and inventory records for moths and butterflies.
• Bulk samples - Collecting data for partly-sorted litter/soil and trap samples.
• Vertebrate Ectoparasites - Only the ectoparasites specimen records (lice, bat flies).
• Arachnida & Myriapoda - Specimen records for spider and arachnid types (excluding acari), millipedes (collection completly databased), and centipede types.