University of Hawaii Insect Museum

Libraries of Life Specimen libraries are vital for biology. So why are museums being forced to cut their funding?

Come to our second annual Darwin Day open house this afternoon!

Our crowdsourcing efforts continue- up next, Odonata!

DigiVol - Pinao'ula: Dragonflies & damselflies of Hawai'i Atlas of Living Australia

Here's a story about a recent study on Lepidoptera phylogeny, with quotes from the UH insect museum director Dr. Rubinoff.

Some Moths are Actually Butterflies According to DNA Sequencing Study By tracing nearly 3,000 genes to the earliest common ancestor of butterflies and moths, University of Florida scientists have created an extensive "Tree of Lepidoptera" in the first study to use la...

Our crowdsourcing expedition on butterflies is complete, we have just launched one for Hawaiian Cerambycidae. Click the link to donate a few minutes of your time to our digitization efforts. Mahalo!

Volunteer Portal - Hawaiian Longhorn Beetles (Cerambycidae) Atlas of Living Australia

We are pleased to announce the use of "crowdsourcing" tools to help modernize our collection. You can join the "virtual expedition" at the Biodiversity Volunteer Portal. Your participation will help us greatly and will contribute to sharing our specimen data with scientists around the world as well as the general public. Mahalo!

Volunteer Portal - Pulelehua of Hawai'i: Butterflies and Skippers Atlas of Living Australia

We had an insect sorting party recently and CTAHR photographers were there to capture some nice photos

Insect Sorting Event The 5th annual UH Insect Museum sorting event drew more than a dozen people June 27. Plant and Environmental Protection Sciences faculty and CTAHR students were joined by grad students in biology and even a coupe second-generation sorters, who helped place specimens in the correct order … and family…

UHIM's Dr. Ryan Caesar was recently in Makawao, Maui for an outreach presentation at the public library that was featured on the front page of The Maui News. This was part of a month-long series of outreach presentations throughout the state for National Library Week.

This story is quite relevant for museums and scientists working with specimens. We generate lots of digital images and other electronic data associated with our collection and research. How do we preserve it, and what do we need to preserve?

The New Age: Leaving Behind Everything, Or Nothing At All Older generations might have left behind physical letters, photographs and journals.

New research from the UHIM!

Moth lineage provides a key to species diversification : University of Hawaiʻi System News College of Tropical Agriculture and Human Resources entomologists discover that the moth genus, Hyposmocoma, holds insights into Hawaii’s vanished ecosystems.

Do you know you can help directly support the UHIM in the form of a gift through the UH Foundation? Such a gift will go to help offset the costs of maintaining the collection, and will support the documentation and preservation of Hawaii's natural heritage. Mahalo!

Make a Gift | UH Foundation The University of Hawai'i Foundation is dedicated to raising private gifts in support of the University's ten campuses and the students and programs they serve.