Auckland Museum's insect collection commenced soon after the Museum was
founded in 1852.
The collection contains comprehensive collections of most insect types as well as other terrestrial and freshwater invertebrates (worms, spiders and their relatives, millipedes and centipedes, some isopods and amphipods).
The geographical coverage of these collections is New Zealand-wide, but is concentrated on northern New Zealand and its offshore islands, particularly the Three Kings, Great Barrier, Cuvier and the Aldermen Is. There are also good collections of some groups from the South Island, the Chathams and subantarctic islands. The collection contains some Pacific material and a collection of Australian beetles.
Key specimens include:
- NZ beetles, moths and parasitic wasps
- Antarctic and subantarctic springtails
- The C.E. Clarke collection of NZ beetles and moths (shared with the Natural History Museum, London)
- Thomas Broun's historic collection of foreign beetles.
There are about 300,000 specimens and the collection grows by about 5,000 per year. Information on individual specimens is currently being entered on a computer database with all of the 300 primary types and about half of the pinned New Zealand collection and entered so far.
Search the databases
Collection records for a small selection of specimens are available for searching. Click the links below:
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Entomology - Primary Types
Records in this part of the database are currently restricted to primary type specimens of all terrestrial and freshwater invertebrate animals except molluscs which can be found with the Marine collections.
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Entomology - Lepidoptera
Records in this part of the database are restricted to New Zealand Lepidoptera (moths and butterflies) that have been identified to species level. The collection contains other specimens awaiting expert identification; for enquiries regarding these please contact the curator on entomology@aucklandmuseum.com.
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Entomology - Cicadas
Records in this part of the database are currently restricted to New Zealand cicadas. A grant from the TFBIS fund administered by the Department of Conservation enabled preparation of these records.
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Staff and research interests
Curator:
John Early - Systematics of parasitic Hymenoptera; NZ insect fauna; fauna of offshore islands.
Research Associate:
Keith Wise: Neuroptera, Trichoptera and Collembola
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