The Museum’s Coleoptera collection

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

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

Sir Joseph Banks Coleoptera collection which dates back to the eighteenth century is part of the Museum's collection.

10,000,000             100,000                        200,000

Specimens                             Type specimens                         Species

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.

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.