Invertebrate Zoology

Norman I. Platnick, In Memoriam 1951-2020  (pdf)

The Division of Invertebrate Zoology remains closed to researchers & visiting scientists to maintain health and safety during the coronavirus pandemic.

Incoming and outgoing loans are at the discretion of a collections' Curator-in-Charge. Do not ship collections or return specimen loans without approval from the collections' Curator-in-Charge. Researchers may continue to access collections information online. See the Museum's coronavirus page for the latest information.

Welcome to the Division of Invertebrate Zoology. Our staff study and archive the living non-vertebrate animals, which make up 95% of all animal species.

The Division research collections contain more than 24 million specimens, representing ~500,000 species. Most of these specimens are terrestrial arthropods, but there are large collections of marine and freshwater invertebrates. Strengths of the collections reflect the research of current and past curators: Arachnids (especially spiders and scorpions), aculeate (sting-bearing) Hymenoptera (including bees, wasps and ants), gall wasps (Cynipoidea), certain Diptera (especially Drosophilidae, Syrphidae and Tachinidae), Hemiptera, Isoptera (termites) and their symbiotic protists, macro-Lepidoptera (particularly of the New World), rove beetles (Staphylinidae), the primitively wingless insects (bristletails and silverfish), marine Mollusca, and fossils in amber. Research centers around field exploration, the collections, and laboratory studies using morphology and DNA sequences to examine the evolutionary relationships of a spectrum of groups from species to phyla.

• Find the Curator in charge of a collection
• Search Our Specimen Database
• Visiting the Invertebrate Zoology Collections
• Invertebrate Zoology Loan Policies
• Contact Us

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Research Highlights

• New species of beetle named after Patricia Vaurie, who worked on beetles at the Museum as a Research Associate
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