Improving the Usefulness of the Snow Entomological Museum tothe Systematics Community

堪萨斯大学的雪昆虫学博物馆是系统昆虫学研究的宝贵而重要的资源。收集是强大的几乎所有主要群体的昆虫，特别是北美的代表，并在一些（例如，蜜蜂、水虫、叶蝉和蝎蝇）博物馆的藏品遍布全球，位居世界最佳之列。最近，人们越来越关注各种形式的生命的养护以及由于热带雨林等自然生境的破坏而造成的多样性的丧失。自然历史博物馆是动物和植物多样性实例的宝库。由于昆虫占所有已知动物物种的四分之三，昆虫博物馆正面临越来越多的要求，要求保存标本（多样性样本），并将其借给研究昆虫系统学或分类的研究人员。这些项目将有助于雪昆虫博物馆增加其对科学界的用处。增加技术援助将加快贷款申请的处理速度。访问专家将被带到博物馆，从身份不明的材料中挑选出对他们自己的研究有用的标本，或者研究相关昆虫群体的同事。赠款提供的设备（例如，昆虫抽屉）将大大提高博物馆的能力，以处理空间需求所产生的详细鉴定标本。

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.