NC State Insect Museum

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Welcome

Housed in the Department of Entomology and the College of Agriculture & Life Science, the NCSU Insect Museum is dedicated to the acquisition and preservation of resources in systematic entomology useful to the NCSU Department of Entomology, the citizens of North Carolina, and the systematics community.

Museum Overview

The NC State University Insect Museum is an internationally recognized systematic resource for insects and mites from North Carolina, the Southeastern United States, and, in several insect groups, the world. Our holdings are partitioned into four main collections:

• NC State University Insect Collection - the vast majority of our specimens are housed here in the research collection
• Genome Bank - our cold storage collection for specimens used in molecular analyses
• NC State University Teaching Collection - approximately 60 drawers of insects used in our insect systematics course (ENT 502)
• NC State University Outreach Collection - approximately 8 drawers used for outreach

With close to 1,400,000 prepared specimens, the Museum is vital to our Department, University, and State, serving a variety of research, extension, outreach, and teaching activities. Holdings of North Carolina insects and of Homoptera are especially outstanding. The worldwide collection of Homoptera, along with NCSU's extensive literature collections on this order, form an unduplicated resource for homopteran research. The NCSU Insect Collection has several other outstanding research collections (Lepidoptera, Acarina, Hymenoptera, Diptera, Coleoptera, Heteroptera, Orthoptera, and Collembola) within it and associated assemblages of literature that are of national and international importance. Collectively, these resources have played an extraordinary role in systematic entomology.

Information

We are a CITES registered research facility (permit: 08US827653/9), and our LSID [link] is urn:lsid:biocol.org:col:1024. Loans and other correspondence concerning specimens should be made through this address and e-mail:

NC State University Insect Museum Department of Entomology 4321 Gardner Hall, Box 7613 NC State University Raleigh, NC 27695-7613 USA

phone: +1 919 515 3595 fax: +1 919 515 7746 email (@ncsu.edu): bob_blinn

Grants & Awards

The NCSU Insect Museum database was compiled with support from the North Carolina Agricultural Research Service and the National Science Foundation (grants DEB-9815867 and DEB-9978026). In 1997 the North Carolina State University Insect Museum was awarded a National Science Foundation grant for expansion of the NCSU Insect Collection. NCSU now holds collections in excess of 1.4 million prepared insects. Significant recent acquisitions include the David L. Wray Collection of Collembola and the Tom Daggy Insect Collection (primarily Coleoptera), each representing at least 50 years of specialized collecting in North Carolina. The award, supplemented by funds from NCSU, provided archival storage for these acquisitions, permitted their integration into existing holdings, and facilitate scientific access to NCSU's resources (NSF DEB-9709141).

(Site Credits) Questions about the museum? Contact Bob Blinn (bob_blinn at ncsu dot edu)
Department of Entomology, Box 7613, North Carolina State University, Raleigh, NC 27695-7613 USA
+1 919 515 3595 (ph), +1 919 515 7746 (fax)