Insect Specimen Museum of Nanjing Agricultural University

Insect Specimen Museum of Nanjing Agricultural University

Nanjing Agricultural University is located at the southern foot of the picturesque Purple Mountain. The university's Insect Specimen Museum was established in the 1920s, formed by merging the insect specimens collected by the entomology group of the Department of Plant Pathology and Entomology at the former University of Nanking and the entomology group of the Agronomy Department of the former College of Agriculture at Nanjing University. After 45 years of continuous organization and collection, it has reached its current scale.

The insect specimens in this museum were collected by Professor Cheng Ganfan (a cicada taxonomist), Qi Zhaosheng, Xia Shiwo, and others during their tenure at the former University of Nanking and Huaxi Union University (Department of Agriculture and Biology) in Chengdu, Sichuan — including areas such as Mount Emei, Guan County, and Songpan in Sichuan. They were also gathered by Professor Huang Qilin (a caddisfly taxonomist) and Mr. Zhou Xiaogang in Nanjing, Jiangsu, as well as through extensive collecting efforts by Professor Ding Jinhua (a planthopper specialist), Researcher Zhang Zhili (a scarab larva specialist), and others including Zhong Juemin, Tian Lixin, Yang Lianfang, Li Youwen, Sun Changhai, and Wang Beixin. Currently, the museum houses over 120,000 insect specimens, including 50,000 pinned specimens and 70,000 preserved in liquid, representing 417 families across 33 orders of the class Insecta. Additionally, it holds 300 type specimens of new species.

Since its establishment, the Insect Specimen Museum has not only provided learning and research materials for the university’s undergraduate and graduate students as well as enthusiasts, but has also supplied valuable scientific specimens to entomologists both in China and abroad. It has previously offered significant reference specimens — such as dragonflies, cicadas, stink bugs, and sawflies — to renowned Chinese taxonomists including Professor Zhao Xiufu (Fujian Agricultural College), Professor Zhou Yao (Northwest Agricultural College), and Professor Zhang Shiming (Jiangxi Agricultural College), thereby supporting China’s taxonomic research on insects. Additionally, the museum has maintained close professional exchanges and specimen exchange relationships with institutions such as the Natural History Museum of Austria, the Natural History Museum of Germany, the Smithsonian Museum in the United States, the Invertebrate Specimen Collection of the Entomology Department at Clemson University in the United States, the Australian Museum, and the Museum of Victoria. The museum is also a key repository for caddisfly specimens (important aquatic insects) and planthopper specimens (key pests of rice and economic crops), earning high recognition both domestically and internationally.

One of the museum’s founders, Professor Huang Qilin (1906–1978), was a pioneer in the taxonomic research of caddisflies in China. During his studies at the Entomology Department of the University of Illinois in the United States from 1945 to 1947, he was mentored by Dr. H.H. Ross, an expert in caddisflies. From 1958 to 1962, he discovered one new subgenus and 37 new species of caddisflies in China. In 1979, he was awarded the “First-Class Technical Innovation Award” by the Ministry of Agriculture of China. Starting in 1978, Tian Lixin, Yang Lianfang, Li Youwen, Sun Changhai, and their graduate students successively described caddisflies in Yunnan (180 species), Fujian (90 species), Zhejiang (80 species), Hubei (44 species), Jiangxi (90 species), Anhui (34 species), Hainan (41 species), Henan (50 species), and Jiangsu (43 species), and conducted species identification of caddisflies in China’s Hengduan Mountains (90 species) and the Wuling Mountain area of Southwest China (23 species). In participating in the “Comprehensive Study on the Uplift of the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau and Its Impact on the Natural Environment and Human Activities,” they undertook the identification of caddisflies and won the 1986 Special Prize for Scientific and Technological Progress from the Chinese Academy of Sciences.

The museum’s directors, Professors Tian Lixin and Yang Lianfang, participated in international symposia on caddisflies in 1986, 1991, and 1993, engaging in extensive professional exchanges with caddisfly scholars from over 20 countries. In 1990 and 1995, they collaborated with Dr. John C. Morse of the Entomology Department at Clemson University in the United States to lead two international field expeditions focused on aquatic insects, researching aquatic insects in six southeastern provinces of China and the Hengduan Mountains. They also founded China’s internal publication “Newsletter on Aquatic Insects and Water Quality Monitoring.” The museum-led project “Systematic Taxonomic Study of Chinese Caddisflies” won the Second-Class Prize for Scientific and Technological Progress from the State Education Commission in 1990, and in 1996 received the “Foreign Expert Engagement Achievement Award” from the Department of Education of the Ministry of Agriculture for the project titled “Chinese Aquatic Insects and Their Application in Water Quality Monitoring.”

Staff at the museum have also been dedicated to the taxonomic study of parasitic wasps, Meenoplidae planthoppers, and adult and nymph stages of planthoppers. They were awarded the Third-Class Prize for Scientific and Technological Progress in Jiangsu Province in 1981. Since the 1980s, staff members of the Insect Specimen Museum have collectively published over 80 papers, described 300 new species, and produced more than 10 publications. Among them, works such as “Identification of Agricultural Insects,” “Economic Insects of China (Caddisflies),” “Fundamental Principles and Methods of Insect Taxonomy,” “Larval Taxonomy,” and “Chinese Aquatic Insects and Their Application in Water Quality Monitoring” (English edition) have had significant influence both in China and abroad.