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United States National Museum, Entomology Collections

Specimen Records: 4,163
Media Records: 778
iDigBio Last Ingested Date: 2026-04-23

The USNM Entomology Collection is one of the largest insect collections in the World. The collection contains over 300,000 species representing approximately 60% of known insect families. With approximately 35 million specimens, including 100,000 holotypes and hundreds of additional paratypes and other secondary types, in more than 232,000 drawers in 5200 cabinets, 33,000 jars or vials, and 50,000 slides from locations worldwide, the collection is strongest in coverage for Nearctic and Neotropical regions. Specimens from the Old World are also well represented, especially Sri Lanka, Philippines, and Papua New Guinea. Particular strengths include mosquitoes, wasps, beetles, butterflies and moths and flies. The collection of Coleoptera at USNM is one of the world’s largest, consisting of more than 10 million specimens, including over 20,000 primary types. The nucleus of the National Collection was formed in 1881 with the transfer of the general collection of the U.S. Department of Agriculture to the National Museum of Natural History. Notable collection acquisitions and donations have significantly enhanced the National Coleoptera Collection. The majority of the collection is housed at the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of Natural History in Washington, DC, other groups are held at the USDA’s Agricultural Research Center in Beltsville, Maryland and the Smithsonian Institution’s Museum Support Center in Suitland, Maryland. The Department of Entomology includes research scientists and museum specialists from the Smithsonian Institution, U.S.D.A. Systematic Entomology Lab and Walter Reed Biosystematics Unit of the Department of Defense.

Contacts

Namenone
Rolenone
EmailLourdes.Chamorro@ars.usda.gov
Name M. Lourdes Chamorro
Rolenone
EmailLourdes.Chamorro@ars.usda.gov
Name M. Lourdes Chamorro
Rolenone
EmailLourdes.Chamorro@ars.usda.gov
This table shows any data corrections that were performed on this recordset to improve the capabilities of iDigBio Search. The first column represents the correction performed. The last two columns represent the number and percentage of records that were corrected. A complete list of the data quality flags and their descriptions can be found here. Clicking on a data flag name will take you to a search for all records with this flag in this recordset.
FlagRecords With This Flag(%) Percent With This Flag
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99.231
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86.476
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86.476
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86.476
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86.476
gbif_canonicalname_added  i3600
86.476
gbif_genericname_added  i3600
86.476
gbif_taxon_corrected  i3600
86.476
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51.285
dwc_scientificnameauthorship_replaced  i1978
47.514
dwc_scientificnameauthorship_added  i1240
29.786
dwc_country_replaced  i768
18.448
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12.635
taxon_match_failed  i445
10.689
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8.552
dwc_family_replaced  i249
5.981
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4.78
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4.348
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3.123
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3.099
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2.859
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2.21
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1.057
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0.577
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0.336
dwc_class_replaced  i11
0.264
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0.264
dwc_originalnameusageid_added  i10
0.24
rev_geocode_failure  i7
0.168
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0.096
dwc_taxonremarks_replaced  i1
0.024