Work on the insect collections

On the second Friday of every month from October to April, there are working afternoons at the insect collections. Anyone who would like to help out or is looking for support in setting up their own collection is very welcome. The work afternoons at the insect collections are also open to newcomers to the subject. In addition to support with the collections, the afternoons focus on professional exchange on identification aids and opportunities for comparison.

Insects comprise more than 40,000 species in Austria, which is around 75 per cent of all animal species living here. They are of great ecological importance and irreplaceable as pollinators of plants, as regulators, in food chains and through the decomposition of organic substances.

Entomologists (entomologists, species experts) identify, prepare and preserve insects, categorise them in the biological systematics and describe newly discovered species. Each specimen in a collection contains a wealth of scientific information. A collection is therefore a database that cannot be replaced by anything else. Types contained in collections are collection specimens that represent the only objective definition of all species according to the “International Rules of Zoological Nomenclature”. Insect collections are scientific cultural assets of the highest priority and represent an important working tool for entomologists. They help to identify the different species, serve as a repository for types and as a database for scientific studies. Collecting is the only reliable and reproducible method of documenting the occurrence of insect species and serves to ensure the reproducibility of scientific results, because unlike most vertebrates, many insect species can only be identified after appropriate preparation.

Collecting is essential, but is it still up to date? Without responsible work to record the species inventory, we will soon only have superficial information about the fauna and flora of our country. Although no species will officially become extinct because no one will know or notice them, no one will be able to take timely action to protect endangered habitats and their organisms. The endangerment of insects is not caused by targeted collecting, but is based almost exclusively on the destruction and narrowing of their habitats, the decline of many plant species and those animal species that serve as hosts for arthropods. The reason for this lies in the increasingly intensive utilisation of the environment by humans.