Museum collections are time machines. Some of the specimens in our drawers were collected more than a century ago — long before anyone was asking whether insects were declining.
A baseline for Missouri
At the Enns Entomology Museum we are building that baseline for Missouri: digitizing specimens, publishing them openly and combining them with other records into a checklist of the state’s insects, showing what the museum holds and where the gaps are.
Going back
Historical series open the door to resurveys: returning to the places where insects were collected decades ago to see which species have stayed, which have gone and which have arrived. The museum’s collections of aquatic insects from Missouri streams are a natural starting point.
Taxonomy is conservation
A species without a name cannot be protected, and declines cannot be tracked in groups that nobody can identify. Discovering and describing species, and making the data open, is the groundwork every conservation decision needs.