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Established in the 1940s as a small collection dealing with agricultural pests, it has grown to one of the largest and most comprehensive research collection of arthropods in the southwestern United States.

The University of Arizona Insect Collection (UAIC) is a part of the Department of Entomology in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences at the University of Arizona.

The UAIC is a regional collection for one of the most diverse and species-rich areas of country, the Sonoran Desert Region. This region includes the Sonoran Desert and all of its included mountain ranges and adjacent biomes in the U.S. and northwestern Mexico.

A great variety of natural habitats occur here, including coastal and inland sand dunes, dry deserts, thornscrub, tropical deciduous forest, riparian corridors, and upland habitats that include the southern Colorado Plateau and the Sky Islands, with a vertical succession of biomes from desert scrub to montane forest and subalpine conifer forest.

In many ways the Sonoran Desert Region is still largely a scientific frontier where numerous new species are discovered and described every year. The arthropod fauna of the Sonoran Desert Region is poorly known and relatively little understood, yet it is exceedingly important to the maintenance and functioning of healthy, productive ecosystems within the region. The region is being strongly affected by climate change and changes in land use. A better understanding of its arthropods will allow for a more comprehensive understanding of the effects of habitat modification and perturbations, and climate change in this region. Such knowledge will lead to better decision-making and more reasoned and effective policies for land management and other practices. The historic holdings of the University of Arizona Insect Collection (UAIC) provide a valuable baseline for research designed to track and evaluate those changes.

To Learn More about Sonoran Desert Insects and the UAIC