The Entomology Collection comprises a great diversity of terrestrial and freshwater insects. Primarily focused on the fauna of Victoria and south-eastern Australia, it also contains material from around Australia and the rest of the world.
One of Museum Victoria’s largest collections, estimated at 2.5–3.0 million specimens, with more than 190 000 registered specimens, the collection is locally, nationally and internationally significant.
It consists of both wet (preserved in 70% ethanol) and dry (pinned) specimens. They cover all major insect groups found in Australia, including butterflies and moths, beetles, grasshopper, ants, bees, true bugs, caddisflies (and other aquatic insects) and cockroaches.
Significant items
- John Curtis Collection of British insects, containing hundreds of Holotypes of British insects.
- Francis Walker Collection of foreign insects (including the scientifically valuable Wallace Indo-Pacific material).
- Castlenau foreign beetle collection
- Godeffroy Collection of Australian and foreign insects.
- Collections from large expeditions such as the 1894 Horn Scientific expedition to Central Australia, and from private collections.
- Approximately 50,000 specimens of spiders, ticks, mites, centipedes, scorpions and millipedes.
- Over 600,000 aquatic insect specimens, the largest and most comprehensive collection of its kind in Australia.
See The John Curtis British Insects Collection, an essay on this collection from A Museum for the People: A history of Museum Victoria and its predecessor institutions 1854-2000.