All insect orders and numerous related arthropod groups are represented in the collection. Outstanding holdings occur in many orders. A few of these holdings are listed below.

COLEOPTERA

The beetle collection constitutes approximately one-sixth of the entire curated insect collection. Slightly over 1,000,000 beetles are pinned, kept in ethanol, or on slides. Another 1,500,000 specimens are unsorted. Based upon only the pinned specimens, Arnett and Samuelson (1969) rank the Survey's Coleoptera collection as the ninth largest in North America. Many groups of Coleoptera are well represented.

The largest and most complete collection of June Beetles in the New World is housed at the Survey. This collection of scarabs was curated in 1989 and 1990 by R. Woodruff. The Andreas Bolter collection, one of the largest personal beetle collections ever assembled, is housed at the Survey. Another well-represented family is the Haliplidae, amassed by M.W. Sanderson and W. U. Brigham. This assemblage of crawling water beetles is the largest in North America.

Other important groups include the Dryopoidea (water beetles), containing those collected by P. N. Musgrave. This is one of the three largest collections in North America. The Pselaphidae (short-winged mold beetles) collection is the second or third largest accumulation of Nearctic species. The Staphylinidae (rove beetles) collection is one of the three largest accumulations of North American species, and the collection of the genus Stenus, assembled by M. W. Sanderson, is the second largest of its kind in North America.
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HYMENOPTERA

The bee, wasp, and ant collections consist of 323,600 specimens pinned, slide mounted, or stored in ethanol. In recent years W. E. LaBerge, emeritus, the Survey's bee and ant specialist, has contributed enormously to the collection during his extensive revisionary work of the bee genera Andrena and Melissodes. In recent years LaBerge has added 30,000 Mexican bees.
Past and present collecting contribute to the extensive holdings of the Hymenoptera. The collection of bumblebees, worldwide in coverage, was assembled by Theodore Frison. The MacGillivray collection including 5,000 type specimens of Symphyta (sawflies), is deposited here. Also well known is the Charles Robertson Hymenoptera collection containing the bees from Robertson's pioneering work on pollination of flowers by insects (Robertson 1928). The Survey hymenopteran collection includes 1,012 primary types (Webb 1980).
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TRICHOPTERA

The extensive Trichoptera collection of Milne, Ross, Schmid, Unzicker, and others is heavily used by scientists from other institutions. It is the third largest collection of this order (246,000 specimens) in the Western Hemisphere. Some of the papers that are based on these specimens include Ross's "Studies of Nearctic Aquatic Insects", "Descriptions of Nearctic Caddisflies (Trichoptera) with special reference to the Illinois species", and "The Caddisflies, or Trichoptera of Illinois". Also, Jack Unzicker's award-winning book on the comparative morphology and evolution of the internal female reproductive system of Trichoptera was based on Survey specimens. Primary types for 535 species of caddisflies are deposited in the Survey's collection (Webb 1980). It is one of the best known and most widely used collections at the Survey.
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THYSANOPTERA

The Thysanoptera constitute another extremely important collection at the Survey. Lewis J. Stannard and his students amassed 44,000 slides and another 121,000 specimens in ethanol. This makes it one of the largest collections of this order in North America. Its growth was the result of an extensive collecting program along with exchanges, purchases, gifts, and retention of material sent for identification. The collection contains voucher specimens for L. J. Stannard's classification of the Tubulifera and "The Thrips, or Thysanoptera of Illinois" plus numerous other sytematic papers. Ninety-five primary types are part of the thrips collection (Gerdes 1977). In recent years more than 6,000 slides have been remounted from Hoyer's into Canada balsam with funding provided through NSF.
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DIPTERA

Most groups of North American flies are well represented in the INHS collection. The Diptera collection comprises 343,500 specimens, including 374 primary types (Webb 1980). It is exceptionally strong in the North American species of the families Tabanidae and Dolichopodidae. Other outstanding holdings in this group include the muscoid flies and chironomids published upon by J. R. Malloch, the syrphids assembled by C. L. Metcalf, the culicids studied by H. H. Ross and W. H. Horsfall, and the Hilarimorphidae revised for the world by D. W. Webb.
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PLECOPTERA

The stonefly collection - containing over 78,000 specimens, including 195 primary types (Webb 1980) - is the largest of this order in North America. This outstanding collection includes the voucher specimens for the reports produced by Frison. The Survey's collection of the small winter stoneflies, Allocapnia, is foremost in the world. These specimens are the basis of the monograph by Ross and Ricker (1971).

Stoneflies are excellent environmental indicators of stream quality. Currently, D. W. Webb and M. A. Harris are collecting stoneflies in Illinois. By comparing populations of the Plecoptera from the late 1920s to the present, they hope to provide an assessment of the current ecological health of the state's waterways. All stonefly locality and identification information has been entered into a Filemaker database and will soon be available on the World Wide Web.
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HOMOPTERA

The main components of the 210,000 identified Homoptera include the leafhoppers, aphids, and scale insects. The Survey collection was the basis for the faunal study of Illinois aphids by Hottis and Frison (1931) and of leafhoppers by D. M. DeLong.

The leafhopper collection is important. The collection includes numerous primary types for the agriculturally important genera Empoasca and Erythroneura of H. H. Ross and D. M. DeLong. This extensive collection contains grassland leafhoppers from all over the world. The Homoptera collection includes 580 primary types (Webb 1980).
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COLLEMBOLA

One-hundred and twenty-seven thousand specimens make up the bulk of the springtail collection. The core of this collection was started in the 1930s when entomologists began collecting soil and duff for processing in Berlese funnels. The addition of the J. W. Folsom and H. B. Mills collections in 1946 has made our Collembola holdings among the best known in the world. The material is primarily North American and West Indian in origin but has worldwide representation in some of the groups. Primary types for 146 springtails are deposited at the Survey (Mari Mutt 1978). The Collembola holdings of the Survey were used extensively by Christiansen and Bellinger in the preparation of their monograph "Collembola of North America north of Mexico".
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LEPIDOPTERA

In 1990 the Illinois Lepidoptera database was created by G. L. Godfrey and E. D. Cashatt. The data in dBase is being transferred into Fox Base+/Mac^reg., a relational database program.
This database contains information from both public and private collections of Illinois Lepidoptera.

The INHS collection contains 112,000 adult pinned and 24,000 larval and pupal specimens in ethanol. It is the largest and most complete moth and butterfly collection in Illinois. Donations include material from the Emil Beer, Murray Glenn, Rod Irwin, Alex Wyatt, Willam Barnes, and James Sternberg collections. The collection was the basis for the classical studies on lepidopterous larvae by S. B. Fracker and on pupae by Edna Mosher.
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ODONATA

The dragonfly and damselfly collection contains more then 17,000 identified specimens. This collection served as voucher material for the publications of J. G. Needham and C. A. Hart, and L. K. Gloyd.
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ORTHOPTERA AND DERMAPTERA

The 8,000 identified specimens of grasshoppers and earwigs in the collection served as the basis of a faunal study on the Illinois Orthoptera and Dermaptera by Hebard.
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EPHEMEROPTERA

There are approximately 19,500 specimens, including 45 primary types of mayflies, housed at the Survey (Webb 1980). Some of this material was the basis for the publication by Burks on the mayflies of Illinois. This collection, as well as other aquatic insect collections, is heavily used in conjunction with studies assessing the environmental health of freshwater habitats.
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HEMIPTERA

The Pentatomidae and the Miridae are some of the most notable holdings of this order at the Survey. Important publications for the pentatomids were by Hart and MacPherson, and H. H. Knight published on the mirids. There are 69,000 specimens of true bugs deposited at the Survey, including 32 primary types (Webb 1980).
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Mecoptera, Psocoptera, Neuroptera, Mallophaga, Anoplura, Arachnida, Myriapoda, Bryozoans

The combined holdings of the orders Mecoptera (scorpionflies), Psocoptera (booklice, psocids, and troggids), Neuroptera, (alderflies, dobsonflies, fishflies, snakeflies, lacewings, antlions, and owlflies), Mallophaga, (chewing lice), and Anoplura (sucking lice) amount to about 41,000 specimens. The outstanding collections are the alderflies studied by H. H. Ross in his Nearctic revision of this group and the scorpionflies which formed the basis for a faunal study by Webb, Penny, and Marlin. Another 500,000 specimens make up the related arthropod holdings, which include the mites, ticks, opiliones, scorpiones, bryozoans, spiders, pseudoscorpions, earthworms, and leeches. An additional two million specimens in all groups are sorted only to order.
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INTERNATIONAL COLLECTION OF SOYBEAN ARTHROPODS

The Survey's holdings include the International Collection of Soybean Arthropods (INTSOY). This collection had its beginnings in 1970 to analyze the soybean fauna of the world, to ascertain the distributional limits of the phytophagous species associated with soybeans, including disease vectors, and to develop an inventory of specimens and research data on parasite-host and predator-prey associations. Over 200,000 specimens were collected. This material and field data were collected from the United States, Puerto Rico, Trinidad, Mexico, Belize, Nicaragua, Colombia, Ecuador, Brazil, Argentina, Sudan, Ethiopia, Uganda, South Africa, Pakistan, India, Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, Taiwan, People's Republic of China, Japan, the Philippines, and Australia.
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AMBER COLLECTION

The INHS Collection houses over 250 pounds of amber from the Dominican Republic. Inclusions occur in about one of every 15 to 20 pieces. Several insect and related arthropod orders have been noted, including Blattaria, Isoptera, Corrodentia, Heteroptera, Hymenoptera, Homoptera, Coleoptera, Lepidoptera, Diptera, and Araneae. The horizon from which the collections were obtained has been determined as the Oligocene-Miocene boundary (Sanderson and Farr 1960).
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