Insect collection

As the collection has built up over so many years, the material can be used to track changes in the Swedish forestry and agricultural landscape. The collections are also used as a basis for taxonomic research, as reference material in research within ecology and conservation biology, as templates for illustrations as well as for educational purposes. The connection to the continuous work on red-listing different species at the Swedish Species Information Centre is of considerable importance.

The collections keep growing

We continue to expand the collections. The department is running a growing number of research project related to biodiversity and conservation biology in forests and agriculture, and these projects generate large amounts of insect material through standardised, quantitative methods, such as through various types of traps or through large-scale hatching. The material is particularly valuable because of the detailed documentation of the insects’ habitat and their presence over time. This enables us to make us of the biological information on the fauna while also improving the reference material. The reporting and registration of red-listed species can also be improved through such a process. 

Modernisation

The collection are currently being modernised. In the old rigid system the species were fixed in a rapidly antiquated order. They are now placed in their separate boxes (the unit box model) making it possible to expand and, if required, move them to a different part of the collection if new findings are discovered concerning relationships.

Insect traces in trees

Insects living in wood and bark leave different kinds of traces behind – larvae eat their way forward, hollow out pupal chambers and leave the tree as fully formed insects through a hatching hole. Frequently, a combination of traces, tree type, decomposition stage and other clues can reveal the type of species it is.