Improving the Usefulness of the Snow Entomological Museum tothe Systematics Community

博物馆的藏品在几乎所有主要昆虫类别中都很强大，特别是北美的代表，在一些昆虫(如蜜蜂、水虫、叶蝉和蝎子苍蝇)中，博物馆的藏品范围广泛，在世界上名列前茅。最近，人们对保护各种形式的生命和破坏热带雨林等自然栖息地造成的生物多样性丧失的关注大大增加。自然历史博物馆是动植物多样性范例的宝库。由于所有已知动物物种的四分之三是昆虫，昆虫学博物馆面临着越来越多的保存标本(多样性样本)的要求，并将这些标本借给研究昆虫分类学或分类的研究人员。这些项目将帮助雪地昆虫博物馆增加其对科学界的有用性。增加的技术援助将加快贷款申请的处理速度。来访的专家将被带到博物馆，从身份不明的材料中挑选对他们自己的研究或对研究相关昆虫群体的同事有用的标本。赠款提供的设备(例如昆虫抽屉)将大大提高博物馆处理因详细鉴定标本而产生的空间需求的能力。

The Snow Entomological Museum at the University of Kansas is a valuable and important resource for the study of systematic entomology. The collection is strong in almost all major groups of insects, particularly North American representatives, and in some (e.g., bees, water bugs, leafhoppers and scorpion-flies) the Museum's holdings are worldwide in scope and rank among the best in the world. Recently, there has been a great increase in concern for the conservation of diverse forms of life and the loss of diversity through destruction of natural habitats, such as tropical rain forests. Museums of natural history are the repositories of examples of animal and plant diversity. And since tree-fourths of all known species of animals are insects, entomological museums are facing a growing number of requests to store specimens (samples of diversity) and to lend these to researchers studying the systematics or classification of insects. This projects will help the Snow Entomological Museum to increase its usefulness to the scientific community. Added technical assistance will speed the processing of loan requests. Visiting specialists will be brought to the Museum to sort from unidentified materials those specimens useful to their own research or that of colleagues studying related groups of insects. Equipment provided by the grant (e.g., insect drawers) will greatly increase the Museum's ability to deal with space needs resulting from detailed identification of specimens.