The Archbold Biological Station located in Highlands County, Florida has one of the best natural history reference collections representing south central Florida’s flora and fauna. The collection is estimated to contain more than 250,000 pinned insect specimens.
On December 29, 2018 I inventoried the Archbold Biological Station’s butterfly specimens. A summary of my findings was published in the Southern Lepidopterists' News, volume 41, number 2, pages 162-168 (see linked pdf here). The Archbold collection contains 571 pinned adult butterfly specimens representing 103 taxa. The collection includes imperiled species such as Cyclargus thomasi, Eunica tatila, Anthanassa frisia, Siproeta stelenes, Heraclides aristodemus, Glutophrissa drusilla and many others that are declining and disappearing in Florida. Many Archbold butterfly specimens have additional information on the labels such as flowers visited, larval host plant, and other data (see linked Excel file here).
The Station recently received a grant from the
National Science Foundation’s Collections in Support of Biological Research
program to digitize the natural history collections. Archbold staff have been photographing
specimens and entering label information into the searchable online databases
iDigBio and Symbiota Collection of Arthropods Network (SCAN).
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