Collection History
Donald M. Tuttle
Floyd G. Werner
William L. Nutting
Carl E. Olson
David R. Maddison
RESOURCES
OUTREACH
The UAIC began as a small collection focused on insect pests found in crop growing regions of Arizona. Over the years productive entomologists associated with UA Department of Entomology, including Laurence Carruth, Donald Tuttle, Floyd Werner, George Butler, Bill Nutting, Carl Olson, Gene Hall and David Maddison have transformed the UAIC to one of the largest and most important arthropod collections in the Desert Southwest. Today the UAIC research collection contains extensive pinned, alcohol, microscope slide collections, plus a growing frozen tissue collection. Altogether, these collections contain approximately 2.0 million specimens representing an estimated 35,000 species.
The collection covers all of the southwestern US with special concentration on the Sonoran Desert Region, its sky islands, and adjacent tropical biomes of northwestern Mexico. In the last few decades, members of the UAIC have participated in surveys funded by land management agencies and parks, including long-term surveys in the Santa Catalina Mountains, Boboquivari Mountains, Mule Mountains, Huachuca Mountains, Chiricahua Mountains, Waterman Mountains, Organ Pipe National Monument, Grand Canyon National Park (in cooperation with Larry Stevens, Museum of Northern Arizona), Ciénega Creek, as well as impact studies of the Mt. Graham telescope construction site in the Pinaleño Mountains and the Rosemont Mine site in the Santa Rita Mountains. In addition, specimens collected during the National Geographic’s 2011 BioBlitz in Saguaro National Monuments (East and West) will be housed at UAIC. The UA is in negotiations with the National Park Service to make the UAIC the main repository for all collections conducted in Saguaro National Park, where intensive collections are now underway in the Tucson and Rincon Mountains by Moore’s students and postdocs. The UAIC recently initiated the accessioning of specimens from the Sierra Madre ranges of Sonora and Chihuahua, derived from fieldwork sponsored by Sky Island Alliance’s Madrean Archipelago Biodiversity Assessment (MABA) program. While most UAIC specimens are from the Sonoran Desert Region, the collection also serves as a repository for faculty, staff, and graduate student research vouchers, and for collections from researchers working on geographically widespread taxonomic groups with worldwide representation.
