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Entomology Research Museum

Entomological organizationsMuseums in Riverside, CaliforniaNatural history museums in CaliforniaUC Riverside buildings and structuresUniversity museums in California
University of California, Riverside
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The UCR Entomology Research Museum is the insect collection of the Department of Entomology of the University of California, Riverside. It contains approximately 4 million total insect specimens, over 3 million of which are pinned, roughly 400,000 mounted on slides, the remainder preserved in ethanol (including most of the non-insect arthropods, and some snails). Of the ~4 million curated holdings, approximately 75% of are identified to genus level or better. An estimated 25% of the entire collection are Hymenoptera, 21% are Coleoptera, 18% Diptera, and 18% Lepidoptera.This is the second oldest of the University of California entomological collections. The first specimens were transferred from the California State Insectary at Sacramento by Harry Smith in 1923. Other sizable personal collections were added by P.H. Timberlake in 1924 and L.D. Anderson in 1948, and the G.P. McKenzie collection of North American Coleoptera was purchased in 1965. The division of Entomology museum was formalized by E.I. Schlinger in 1962, and is now one of the 20 largest insect collections in the United States, and one of the 10 largest strictly University-based collections. For many of the special taxonomic collections, such as specimens from southern California, the effective rank is considerably higher.The UCR collection of Chalcidoidea (Hymenoptera) is one of the world's largest of this group, and the slide collection of Chalcidoidea has no comparison in the world (more than 100,000 slides, primarily Trichogrammatidae, Aphelinidae, Mymaridae, Eulophidae, and Encyrtidae). Additional specialty taxa represented as slides or pinned specimens are Apoidea, Asiloidea (esp. Bombyliidae, Therevidae, Asilidae), Meloidae, Thysanoptera, Staphylinidae, Melyridae, Coccinellidae, Sciomyzidae, Tephritidae, Miridae, Aphididae, Coccoidea, and various selected genera (e.g., the scarab genera Pleocoma and Chrysina). The holdings include over 1,100 primary types and many thousands of paratypes of the preceding taxa (the majority attributable to P.H. Timberlake).The vast majority of material is from southern California, Arizona, and the Baja California Peninsula, including one of the most extensive collections of insects from the Sonoran Desert (esp. Colorado Delta and Mojave components), and Coastal sage scrub ecological zones. In addition to substantial northern California holdings and other U.S. and Mexican material, there are also significant amounts of material from Central and South America, the Russian Far East and its European part, India, Australia, South Africa, and Thailand. The parasitic wasp collection is the most geographically diverse, with material from all biogeographic regions, and dating back to the early 1900s.

Excerpt from the Wikipedia article Entomology Research Museum (License: CC BY-SA 3.0, Authors, Images).

Entomology Research Museum
Picnic Hill Road, Riverside

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N 33.970077 ° E -117.325586 °
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Picnic Hill Road

Picnic Hill Road
92507 Riverside
California, United States
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University of California, Riverside

The University of California, Riverside (UCR or UC Riverside) is a public land-grant research university in Riverside, California. It is one of the ten campuses of the University of California system. The main campus sits on 1,900 acres (769 ha) in a suburban district of Riverside with a branch campus of 20 acres (8 ha) in Palm Desert. In 1907, the predecessor to UCR was founded as the UC Citrus Experiment Station, Riverside which pioneered research in biological pest control and the use of growth regulators. UCR's undergraduate College of Letters and Science opened in 1954. The Regents of the University of California declared UCR a general campus of the system in 1959, and graduate students were admitted in 1961. To accommodate an enrollment of 21,000 students by 2015, more than $730 million has been invested in new construction projects since 1999. Preliminary accreditation of the UC Riverside School of Medicine was granted in October 2012 and the first class of 50 students was enrolled in August 2013. It is the first new research-based public medical school in 40 years. UCR is a member of the Association of American Universities. In 2000, UC Riverside was classified as an "R1: Doctoral Universities – Very high research activity." UCR's sports teams are known as the Highlanders and play in the Big West Conference of the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) Division I. Their nickname was inspired by the high altitude of the campus, which lies on the foothills of Box Springs Mountain. The UCR women's basketball team won back-to-back Big West championships in 2006 and 2007. In 2007, the men's baseball team won its first conference championship and advanced to the regionals for the second time since the university moved to Division I in 2001.