Essig Museum of Entomology

Predicting Polymorphic Traits in Gryllus Crickets

Long-winged Gryllus lineaticeps. Crickets in the genus Gryllus exhibit phenotypic plasticity. Under certain conditions, crickets can either be flight capable with long wings and can fly to the songs of faraway mates and resources in times of scarcity. And some

Evolution Day 2024

February 11th & 12th, 2024 (Sunday & Monday) 11:00am – 5:00pm (1 hour tours) Tickets available via Eventbrite Each year, the Essig Museum celebrates the birthdays of Charles Darwin (February 12th, 1809), Alfred Russel Wallace (January 8th, 1823), and Henry

On The Wings Of A Butterfly: A Matter Of Scale

Have you ever touched the wings of a moth or butterfly and gotten some “powder” on your fingers? If you look through a microscope you will see that powder is actually tiny scales, like on a fish or lizard, or

Jerry A. Powell (1933 – 2023)

You can make a donation in memory of Jerry Powell to the Essig Museum Fund. Your donation will help us to continue building the collection and making it accessible for research, education, and outreach. Jerry Alan Powell, (23 May 1933

Essig Brunch

We will be hybrid this semester – Fridays 10:00-11:00am. We will meet in-person in 2063 VLSB and on Zoom. Essig Brunch is a weekly seminar series, run by Graduate Students in Arthropod Science, featuring local and visiting researchers presenting a

Adopt A Drawer

Leave your mark! Or honor family, friends, or a mentor, by adopting a specimen drawer at the Essig Museum. Alumni, add your year of graduation. Choose your favorite insect group and make a donation through our Give To Cal

Our Mission

The Essig Museum of Entomology on the campus of the University of California at Berkeley houses an active research collection of over 5,000,000 terrestrial arthropods. From humble beginnings as a teaching collection over a hundred years ago, through exponential growth as the California Insect Survey beginning in 1939, and ongoing research projects, the Essig Museum is now one of the largest and most important university-based research collections of insects in North America. Primarily a collection of specimens from the Western Hemisphere, regional emphasis is on the eastern Pacific Rim, in particular California, Mexico, and Central America, and the islands of the central Pacific. The mission of the museum is utilization of the collection to facilitate research, teaching, and outreach in arthropod biology, evolution, and systematics, and document changes in insect populations in response to climate, land use, and other environmental changes. We are committed to making the information contained in our collection accessible to researchers, students, and the broader community, through loans, specimen digitization, outreach events, and museum research projects, and foster interactions within the Berkeley Natural History Museums consortium, as well as with national and global collaborators.

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