The SDSU Biodiversity Museum Terrestrial Arthropods Collection houses over 50,000 pinned, slide-mounted, and alcohol-preserved specimens of terrestrial arthropods (including insects, arachnids, and myriapods). Most of these specimens were collected in southern California and adjacent regions (e.g., Arizona, Baja California, and Mexico). The collection holdings in Orthoptera, Lepidoptera, Coleoptera, and Arachnida are particularly strong.
The collection is an important resource for both the teaching and research missions within the Department of Biology, with the arthropod teaching collections used in several courses. A synoptic collection of local insects is kept for this purpose.
We are in the process of digitizing and photographing parts of the collection; currently, over 4,000 records are available at Ecdysis, a portal for live-data arthropod collections.
For further information about the arthropod collection, please contact the curator, Dr. Marshal Hedin.
