The Field Museum's Insect Collection contains worldwide collections of Arthropoda (excluding Crustacea) that rank fifth in overall size among North American collections. At present, the collection includes approximately 4.1 million pinned insects and 8 million specimens or lots of insects and other arthropods in alcohol or on microscope slides. The collection receives heavy use by US and international visitors and borrowers. Collection data are now available online in KE EMu for many parts of the collection:
- Specimen catalogs of ants, bat flies, lice, millipedes, scorpions, and types of other non-mite arachnids, Lepidoptera from the Strecker Collection, and some Coleoptera: Staphylinidae;
- Species-level inventories (with specimen counts) of our holdings for the beetle families Staphylinidae, Silphidae, Histeridae, Sphaeritidae, Synteliidae, Agyrtidae, Carabidae, and for Lepidoptera and Diptera;
- Species-level inventories (usually with unit tray counts) for the other insect orders.
