Search the Collection
4 images
Click to open gallery
The systematic collections of the Yale Peabody Museum’s Division of Entomology comprise over 1.5 million curated specimens. The Division’s holdings are worldwide in scope, with particular focus on the following taxonomic groups:
- World Lepidoptera (butterflies and moths)
- North American Coleoptera (beetles), Heteroptera (“true bugs”), Hymenoptera (sawflies, wasps, bees, and ants), and Odonata (dragonflies and damselflies)
- “Primitive groups,” including Microcoryphia, Thysanura, Entotrophi
The Division of Entomology collections were started from scientific explorations in the 1860s by the distinguished invertebrate zoologist Addison E. Verrill, the first Curator of Zoology at the Peabody Museum, and his colleague Sidney Irving Smith, the first Professor of Comparative Anatomy at Yale (and State Entomologist for Connecticut). The first entomological teaching at Yale was offered by Asa Fitch in 1860, and then later, more regularly, by Verrill. The noted American dipterist, anatomist, and vertebrate paleontologist Samuel W. Williston began his Manual of North America Diptera in 1888 in New Haven, Connecticut.
The focus of both Verrill and Smith was marine invertebrates, and thus the entomology collection grew sporadically to reach approximately 50,000 specimens by the mid-1940s. During the first half of the 20th century, entomology was centered largely around the studies of the arachnologist Alexander Petrunkevitch and noted evolutionary ecologist G. Evelyn Hutchinson. In 1948, Charles L. Remington joined the Yale faculty, and during the following five decades Remington and his colleagues and students expanded the collection holdings more than 20-fold through collecting expeditions and acquisition of private and/or institutional collections.
The Division also maintains a general entomological library of periodicals, books, and reprints that includes coverage of arachnology donated from the Alexander Petrunkevitch Library.
The Division of Entomology has acquired historically important collections dispersed by other institutions, and specialty collections organized around evolutionary themes:
- A large regional parasitic Hymenoptera collection from the United States Department of Agriculture U.S. Forest Service
- The University of Indiana Collection, which contains gall wasps collected by Alfred Kinsey
- Collections from Princeton University, Dartmouth College, and Brown University
- The Bridgham Collection from Rhode Island, with lepidopteran types from W. H. Edwards and A. R. Grote
- Extinction and Hybridization
Return Of The 17-Year Cicadas!
The phenomenon of the 17-year cicada is one of the marvels of the natural world. Museum collections like those at the Peabody are vital to the long-term preservation of the underground habitats of this remarkable insect.
Connecticut Butterfly Atlas Project
From 1995 to 1999, 351 volunteers searched the state to document Connecticut’s butterfly species and map their distribution. The story of Connecticut’s butterflies is told in the Connecticut Butterfly Atlas.
Entomological Objets d’Art
How much fun is it to poke around some neat old stuff? See the fascinating containers from around the world in which specimens were shipped and stored. Many of these items are as rare and unusual as the specimens themselves.
Research in the Entomology Collections
The Peabody’s curatorial divisions are governed by the Museum’s collections policies and best practices document. Collections are available to researchers for scholarly use and loans are issued to individuals at established institutions. Loans and access can be arranged through the curatorial division’s collections managers.
|
Larry Gall
Collections Manager,
Entomology
+1 203 342 9892
peabody.entomology@yale.edu
|
The Bulletin of the Peabody Museum of Natural History, Yale University, publishes original research in the natural science disciplines represented by the collections of the Yale Peabody Museum’s curatorial divisions.