Coleoptera collections

The Coleoptera collection contains eight to ten million specimens and over one hundred thousand type specimens, housed in 22,000 drawers.

The Museum’s Coleoptera collection is among the oldest and most important in the world.

The collection includes Sir Joseph Banks' Coleoptera collection, which dates back to the eighteenth century.

Strengths:

The Coleoptera collection includes type material of almost 100,000 species, including types from:

• Alfred Russel Wallace (1823-1913)
• David Sharp (1840-1922)
• George C. Champion (1859-1927)
• George R. Waterhouse (1810-1888)
• Charles O. Waterhouse (1843-1917) 
• Rev. Thomas Blackburn (1844-1912)
• Thomas Broun (1838-1919)
• Francis Polkinghorne Pascoe (1813-1893)
• Henry Walter Bates (1825-1892)
• George Lewis (1829-1926)

The collection also houses around 5,000 beetles from Charles Darwin's Beagle voyage and material from the Biologia Centrali Americana.

Recent acquisitions include the Hugues Bomans collection of stag beetles and the Voříšek collection of weevils.

10,000,000             100,000                        200,000

Specimens                             Type specimens                         Species

Country of origin

The collection has worldwide geographical coverage with excellent historical coverage of:

• Australasia
• Sub-Saharan Africa
• Southeast Asia
• Japan and the Indian subcontinent

It is uneven though, with notable weaknesses from:

• Eastern Europe
• North Asia
• China
• North Africa
• North and South America

Contemporary fieldwork has often been concentrated on South America in an attempt to redress this situation.