THE BEETLE COLLECTION

INTRODUCTION

There are two parts to the beetle collection housed in the Ashworth Laboratories. This collections was acquired from the Department of Forestry in 1999.

1) Wood boring and pestiferous beetles
These beetles make up the majority of the collection and are mainly xylophagous, feeding on wood. These feeding habits cause the beetles in some cases to be significant pests. The collection consists of beetles collected from many regions around the World. It also includes many native British beetles along with characteristic examples of the damage they inflict.

Lampropepla rothschildi	Family Cerambycidae: larval damage

2) General Families of the Order Coleoptera / Novel beetles
The beetles collected illustrate some of the many families of the Order Coleoptera. These include beetle families with a range of feeding habits other than those that feed on plants. Additionally some of the specimens were collected for their novel and impressive morphological adaptations.

Macrodontia cervicornis	Lucanus ceruus male

The collection was catalogued by Jody Bourton in 2002. The catalogue lists accession number, family, genera, species, date collected, sex and stage, position, country, region, condition, date purchased if purchased, collector and who determined the specimen. The catalogue occurs in paper format and in electronic format.