LACM Entomology Collection

Occurrence
Latest version published by Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County on Sep 25, 2024 Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County

Download the latest version of this resource data as a Darwin Core Archive (DwC-A) or the resource metadata as EML or RTF:

Data as a DwC-A file download 582,902 records in English (38 MB) - Update frequency: irregular
Metadata as an EML file download in English (17 KB)
Metadata as an RTF file download in English (7 KB)

Description

With over 800,000 described species — more than half of all known living organisms — insects are the most diverse group of animals on Earth. The Natural History Museum's entomology collection has more than 5.8 million specimens of insects and spiders. The collection's strength lies in its holdings of specimens of ants, phorid flies, scarab beetles, and moths from North and Central America. Museum scientists conduct world-class research on systematics, studying species and their relationships, the evolution of major groups, and fossil insects in amber. They conduct field work on insect biodiversity at home and in tropical countries. Entomology at the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County goes back as far as 1913, when the Museum first opened.

Data Records

The data in this occurrence resource has been published as a Darwin Core Archive (DwC-A), which is a standardized format for sharing biodiversity data as a set of one or more data tables. The core data table contains 582,902 records.

2 extension data tables also exist. An extension record supplies extra information about a core record. The number of records in each extension data table is illustrated below.

Occurrence (core)
582902
Multimedia 
40049
ResourceRelationship 
521

This IPT archives the data and thus serves as the data repository. The data and resource metadata are available for download in the downloads section. The versions table lists other versions of the resource that have been made publicly available and allows tracking changes made to the resource over time.

Versions

The table below shows only published versions of the resource that are publicly accessible.

How to cite

Researchers should cite this work as follows:

Mertz W, Kung G, Xie W (2024). LACM Entomology Collection. Version 5.24. Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County. Occurrence dataset. https://ipt.vertnet.org/resource?r=lacm_ento&v=5.24

Rights

Researchers should respect the following rights statement:

The publisher and rights holder of this work is Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County. To the extent possible under law, the publisher has waived all rights to these data and has dedicated them to the Public Domain (CC0 1.0). Users may copy, modify, distribute and use the work, including for commercial purposes, without restriction.

GBIF Registration

This resource has been registered with GBIF, and assigned the following GBIF UUID: 0ec927cf-325a-4d63-9499-d721c734463a.  Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County publishes this resource, and is itself registered in GBIF as a data publisher endorsed by GBIF-US.

Keywords

Specimen; Occurrence; Occurrence

Contacts

William Mertz
  • Metadata Provider
  • Originator
  • Point Of Contact
  • Database & Reports Manager
Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County
  • 900 Exposition Blvd.
90007 Los Angeles
California
US
Giar-Ann Kung
  • Metadata Provider
  • Originator
  • Point Of Contact
  • Collections Manager
Natural History Museum of Los Angeles Co.
  • 900 Exposition Blvd.
90007 Los Angeles
California
US
Weiping Xie
  • Point Of Contact
  • Collections Manager
Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County
  • 900 Exposition Blvd.
90007 Los Angeles
California
US
Laura Russell
  • Programmer
  • VertNet Programmer
David Bloom
  • Programmer
  • VertNet Coordinator
John Wieczorek
  • Programmer
  • Information Architect
Museum of Vertebrate Zoology at Berkeley
Brian Brown
  • Curator
  • Entomology Curator
Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County
  • 900 Exposition Blvd.
90007 Los Angeles
California
US
Weiping Xie
  • Point Of Contact
  • Entomology Collection Manager
Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County
  • 900 Exposition Blvd.
90007 Los Angeles
California
US

Geographic Coverage

The entomology collection is the largest in Southern California. Although the phorid flies represented in this data are from all over the world, they are primarily from North and South America with an emphasis on Costa Rica, Colombia, USA, Equador, and Panama.

Bounding Coordinates South West [-90, -180], North East [90, 180]

Taxonomic Coverage

Family: Phoridae is represented in this data., Family: Phoridae is represented in this data.

Family Phoridae (Phorid flies)

Additional Metadata

Alternative Identifiers 0ec927cf-325a-4d63-9499-d721c734463a
https://ipt.vertnet.org/resource?r=lacm_ento