Invertebrate Zoology
Please note our annual freeze on shipping or receiving specimens during December to avoid increased risk of loss or damage to specimen packages. Shipping and receiving will resume in January. Apologies for any inconvenience.
The Division houses more than 24 million specimens, which comprises about 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.
- Visiting the Invertebrate Zoology Collections
- Invertebrate Zoology Loan Policies
- Contact Us
- Search Our Specimen Database
Research Highlights (more)