An Introduction
What Is It?
The University of Minnesota Insect Collection, which began in 1879, is a major national and regional resource in entomology. The collection's 3,239,900 pinned, alcohol-preserved, and slide-mounted specimens represent 47,076 species. The collection has been growing by an average of 82,000 specimens per year over the last 5 years. These specimens provide the permanent physical record of the identity, diversity, and distribution of the insect fauna of Minnesota, much of the United States, and many parts of the world.
The collection is used as a reference to identify both beneficial and harmful insect species in agricultural, urban, and natural settings. Insects are critically important in these areas as insects are (1) a valuable food resource for many native fish and wildlife species, (2) important pests of agricultural crops as well as native and exotic plants, and (3) valuable in the control of insects and plant pest species, or as pollinators of crops or native plants. The collection also supports research and graduate education in systematic and taxonomic entomology. In addition, the specimens in this collection are essential as tools for educating the general public as to the values of nature and biodiversity.
History
Contributions to the University of Minnesota Insect Collection began in 1879 with a collection of spiders from the North Shore of Lake Superior. Since it began, the Collection's holdings have grown from a regional collection of 3,000 specimens to a major national and international resource of more than 3 million specimens, representing an invaluable databank of insect biodiversity. Museum systematists have described well over 500 new species of insects over that last decade alone. In the most recent survey (based on 1986 holdings), the Collection ranked as the 8th largest university-affiliated insect collection in North America and 19th overall. Enhancing the Collection's status as an outstanding research facility are seven resident systematists, computerized inventory management and specimen databases, a large departmental library, and a molecular systematics laboratory. The Collection is the mainstay of graduate training in systematic entomology at the University of Minnesota.