Essig Museum of Entomology

Shades of Nature

For nearly 400 million years, evolution has shaped the amazing diversity of color in insects. Whether flashy, iridescent, subtle or cryptic, their colors are more than just beautiful. Some insects have bright colors to attract mates or to warn predators

Homecoming 2024

On Homecoming / Alumni / Parents Weekend (October 18-19, 2024), the Essig Museum hosts an open house to view our collections on Friday (12:00 – 5:00 pm) and Saturday (12:00 – 5:00 pm), and invites alumni and their families

California Oak Moth

Watch the KQED Deep Look video on California oak moths. We are tracking outbreaks. Let us know if you notice a swarm of these moths or their caterpillars (essig.museum@gmail.com). UPDATE: It looks like the oak moth population on the UC

IDENTIFICATION

Need help identifying an insect, spider, or other arthropod? Here are a few resources that might help. When asking for help identifying any organism, please note the geographic location, habitat, behavior, or any other information about the specimen. Many species

Essig Brunch

We will be hybrid again this semester – Fridays 10:00-11:00am. We will meet in-person in 2063 VLSB and on Zoom (asks essig.museum@gmail.com for zoom link). Attendees may gather in 2063 VLSB to view virtual talks as a group. Essig Brunch

Adopt A Drawer

Leave your mark! Or honor family, friends, or a mentor, by adopting a specimen drawer at the Essig Museum. Alumni, add your year of graduation. Choose your favorite insect group and make a donation through our Give To Cal

Our Mission

The Essig Museum of Entomology on the campus of the University of California at Berkeley houses an active research collection of over 5,000,000 terrestrial arthropods. From humble beginnings as a teaching collection over a hundred years ago, through exponential growth as the California Insect Survey beginning in 1939, and ongoing research projects, the Essig Museum is now one of the largest and most important university-based research collections of insects in North America. Primarily a collection of specimens from the Western Hemisphere, regional emphasis is on the eastern Pacific Rim, in particular California, Mexico, and Central America, and the islands of the central Pacific. The mission of the museum is utilization of the collection to facilitate research, teaching, and outreach in arthropod biology, evolution, and systematics, and document changes in insect populations in response to climate, land use, and other environmental changes. We are committed to making the information contained in our collection accessible to researchers, students, and the broader community, through loans, specimen digitization, outreach events, and museum research projects, and foster interactions within the Berkeley Natural History Museums consortium, as well as with national and global collaborators.

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