Michigan Tech’s Insect Collection: An important historical resource in the Upper Peninsula

Regional insect collections can be valuable resources when covering under-represented areas, unique time periods, or unique collectors. Houghton and Baraga County Michigan are two predominantly forested counties in the Upper Peninsula (UP) of Michigan. The main campus for Michigan Technological University is based in Houghton, MI with a forestry field campus in Baraga County that was acquired in 1954. The university has had forest entomology research in some capacity at least since the 1930’s with faculty, students, and members of the community preserving and submitting various specimens in the decades since then, making it a unique collection demographically. The collection was recently revamped with specimens formally sorted with all labels digitally transcribed and published in Ecdysis. The history of the collection and its present state is briefly described. The Michigan Technological University Insect Collection houses specimens from a relatively under-collected region of the state and has a number of contributions that are more than 50 years old, with new submissions now collated annually. Our hope is to make this collection more accessible and to support larger conservation efforts or researchers or educators to expand their knowledge of insect distributions and the UP’s natural history.