The Field Museum's Division of Environment, Culture, and Conservation (ECCo) has developed a Rapid Color Guide for Common Spiders of the Chicago Region. The guide and others can be viewed and downloaded for free from The Field Museum's website. Read more about New Guide for Common Spiders of the Chicago Region
The Field Museum's Insect Collection contains worldwide collections of Arthropoda (excluding Crustacea) that rank fifth in overall size among North American collections. At present, the collection includes approximately 4.1 million pinned insects and 8 million specimens or lots of insects and other arthropods in alcohol or on microscope slides. The collection receives heavy use by US and international visitors and borrowers. Collection data are now available online in KE EMu for many parts of the collection:
Learn more about Arthropod Collections
The entire scorpion (Scorpiones) collection has been databased as lots, largely through the efforts of Tom Anton and collection manager Dan Summers. As of February 2008, it consists of close to 1000 lots (mostly single-specimen), including 71 type lots, from 53 different countries, with 11 of the 18 scorpion families represented. The Field Museum's types of spiders (Araneae, ca. 140 lots), daddy-long-legs (Opiliones, ca. 100 lots), and pseudoscorpions (Pseudoscorpiones, ca. 80 lots), have all been databased. Relatively little non-type material of those orders has been entered so far.
Learn more about Arachnida & Myriapoda Collections
The Division of Insects covers insects, arachnids (spiders and their relatives), and myriapods (millipedes, centipedes and their relatives). Our curators and collection management staff work together closely to maintain a world-class collection of more than 12 million specimens, over half the Museum's holdings.
Read more about Insects, Arachnids and Myriapods