Diptera collection

Fly Siphona pilistyla on a collection needle

Siphona pilistyla

Curator

Thomas Pape

Collection managers

Anders Illum, Jan Pedersen & Sree Gayathree Selvantharan

About the collection

The Diptera collection consists of about 150,000 pinned specimens, most of which are sorted to family and a substantial part to species. It contains about 11,000 species (~8% of the world fauna) and has a particular strength on Brachycera, and in particular western Palaearctic species.

There are also extensive holdings of various Brachycera from Patagonia, Kashmir, South India, Thailand, Philippines, Bismarck Archipelago, and Tanzania.

Additionally, the ‘wet’ collection includes substantial amounts of unsorted material.

The collection also contains a large number of types from the collection of I.C. Fabricius; of other major type collections may be mentioned those of C.R.W. Wiedemann, R.C. Stæger and W. Lundbeck.

Diptera collection in numbers

  • Estimated number of specimens/collections: Approx. 150,000 pinned specimens
  • Types: Approx. 2,950 specimens
  • Digitally available specimens: Approx. 2,750
  • Percentage digitized: 2%

Strengths

  • Greenland Diptera
  • Western Palaearctic Brachycera
  • Muscoid calyptrates
  • Sarcophagidae

Important subcollections/specimens