BugBase

Welcome to BugBase, the Department of Environment and Conservation’s Terrestrial Invertebrate Collection.

BugBase is a catalogue of the Department’s Forest Insect Reference Collection (approximately 20,000 specimens). The database was created at the Western Australian Department of Agriculture with Microsoft Access and can hold information on dry, wet and mounted specimens, and track their loan to other institutions.

Stephen Curry, Forest Entomologist who worked in the Department of Agriculture from 1965–1985, started this collection with specimens mainly from the south-west forest areas of Western Australia. The collection was transferred to the Department of Conservation and Land Management (now Department of Environment and Conservation) on his retirement in 1985.

Over the years several persons have added to it and it now holds over 17,000 specimens of terrestrial invertebrates, mainly insects. The invertebrates are held in 6 sub-collections: pinned specimens; wood samples; herbarium samples; photos and slides; Prodromus; and spirit collections.

Search BugBase

Beetles

More than half the collection is made up of beetles, mainly timber borers, which is where Stephen Curry’s interest lay. We have an extensive collection of specimens belonging to the family Scarabaeidae subfamily Melolonthinae tribes Sericini and Liparetrini and in particular the genus Liparetrus.

There are also extensive collections made by Paul van Heurck and Gordon Friend in the Batalling Jarrah Forest near Collie, the Tingle forest near Walpole and the Wheatbelt and Stirling Range near Albany and an extensive collection made by Karin Strehlow from the Kingston Project research area.

Butterflies

There is an extensive collection of butterflies in the collection, especially Lycaenidae and Nymphalidae from WA which have been collected by Andy Williams and Matthew Williams, who both work in butterfly conservation in WA.

Other Notable Insects

Specimens of the Gondwanan Relict Austromerope poultoni (Order Mecoptera Family Meropeidae), the endemic Dryandra moth Carthaea saturnoides (Family Carthaeidae) and the Helena gum moth Opodiphthera helena Family (Saturniidae) are well represented in the collection. There is also one specimen of the giant Hercules moth Coscinocera hercules.

Helena gum moth (Opodiphthera helena)

Contact

Enquiries regarding the collection should be directed to Ian Abbott.

BugBase is a collaborative project between DEC, Department of Agriculture and The Lotteries Commission.