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.
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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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+/Macreg., 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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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