Entomology
Overview
Welcome to the University of Alaska Museum Insect Collection. The collection was established
as part of a NSF - funded Arctic Archival Observatory grant in late 2000.
The UAM Insect Collection is the northern-most facility of its kind in the United
States. It has the potential to become a world-class depository for dry, alcohol,
and preserved-tissue samples of northern arthropods (and other terrestrial invertebrates), primarily from Alaska.
Although a young collection (begun in 2000), we have recently surpassed 407,000 records representing over 2 million specimens in various curatorial states (as of Jan 2024), making this dataset among the top ten largest in entomology based on . Over 99% of these records have been georeferenced. As of 2020, approximately 90% of the 272,892 specimens in the pinned collection had been databased. Our database holds ~80,000 records of ethanol preserved specimens but it is unknown how much of the wet collection remains undatabased. At least one specimen of every lowest identification, in both the pinned and wet collections, has been databased so we have of the collection. 208,337 specimens have been identified to the species level - these represent ~4,200 species. We have been building a DNA barcode library of Alaskan species and have so far obtained DNA barcodes for 150,000+ UAM Insect Collection specimen records have been cited or otherwise used in >100
Mission
To create a resource that makes publicly available as much information as possible concerning the non-marine arthropods of Alaska.
We hope to answer these questions: Which species occur in Alaska? Where do these species occur? Are they changing? Surprisingly, despite over 200 years of science, we don't know if we've documented even half of the species in Alaska.
Volunteers
If you have a few hours a week and would like to volunteer in the Entomology Department
please contact the Curator, Derek Sikes.
Donations
If you are thinking of starting a project that will produce non-marine invertebrate
specimens which you would like to donate, please contact the Curator to discuss details
such as which pins to use if you are pinning specimens (stainless #2 are highly recommended)
and how to record latitude / longitude for your labels. See the section devoted to
donations.
If you would like to make a monetary donation to support student and other entomological research in Alaska, you can do so at this website: https://uaf.edu/giving/ways/how.php
Important - In the gift designation or comments box, put 鈥淜enelm W. Philip Entomology Fund.鈥
Thanks!
Specimen Data
the Insect Collection Database, ARCTOS, or try the saved searches below:
Find all
Find all specimen
Find records of
Draft checklist of (species, smaller list)*
Draft checklist of (any IDs, larger list)*
represented in the collection.
represented in the collection.
(*Note these lists include records from the literature of taxa not represented in
the collection.)
Derek S. Sikes
Curator of Insects, Professor of Entomology
University of Alaska Museum
1962 Yukon Dr.
Fairbanks, Alaska 99775
907 474 6278
dssikes 'at' alaska.edu
