The Entomology Collection is one of Museum Victoria’s largest, estimated at 2.5–3 million specimens, more than 190 000 of which are registered. The collection is locally, nationally and internationally significant.
It contains several important historical collections and many thousands of irreplaceable type specimens that are used in the scientific description of species. Comprising both wet (preserved in 70% ethanol) and dry (pinned) specimens, it covers all major insect groups found in Australia, including butterflies and moths, beetles, grasshoppers, ants, bees, true bugs, caddisflies (and other aquatic insects) and cockroaches.
Significant items
- Francis Walker Collection of foreign insects (including the scientifically valuable Wallace Indo-Pacific material).
- Castelnau foreign beetle collection.
- Godeffroy Collection of Australian and foreign insects.
- Collections from large expeditions such as the 1894 Horn Scientific expedition to Central Australia, and from private collections.
- Approximately 50 000 specimens of spiders, ticks, mites, centipedes, scorpions and millipedes.
- Over 600 000 aquatic insect specimens, the largest and most comprehensive collection of its kind in Australia.
Wasp tray, John Curtis Collection
Source: Museum Victoria
John Curtis Collection of Insects
In 1863, Frederick McCoy, Director of the National Museum of Victoria, purchased the John Curtis Collection of British and Foreign Insects for £567.
John Curtis (1791–1862) was a well-known British entomologist who amassed a collection of over 40 000 specimens, covering all major orders of insects and containing many type specimens used to describe new species. The specimens in the collection were gathered either by Curtis himself or by other eminent British entomologists of the day. The oldest specimen dates back to 1796.
McCoy also purchased the Curtis Agricultural Insect Collection, which documents British agricultural pest insects. This is an invaluable biological snapshot of British insect pest fauna from the 1820s to 1860s. Curtis maintained handwritten diaries that detail the locality and host records for every specimen in the collection. It continues to be examined by European and American scientists today because the type specimens of many European species are included. It also contains species now considered to be extinct in England.
Author: Ken Walker. Taken from:
Treasures of the Museum (2004)
Setting up a Malaise trap during the Horn expedition, Finke National Park, Northern Territory, 1994.
Image: John Broomfield
Source: Museum Victoria
Contemporary collecting
Through regular field surveys of invertebrate diversity, such as the Bush Blitz and Bioscan projects, the museum's Entomology Collection holds recent snapshots of Australia's insect life.
Peter Lillywhite, Collection Manager of Entomology & Arachnology examining a drawer of butterfly specimens.
Image: David Paul
Source: Museum Victoria
Variation within species
The vast Entomology Collection documents the diversity within and between populations of a species.