Insect Specimens

A glass-topped case, a Morpho wing flashing blue in the dark. Insect specimens include butterflies, beetles, grasshoppers and stick insects from Peru, Malaysia, Indonesia, Papua New Guinea, Madagascar and Central Africa, mounted under glass in wood frames. Blue Morpho butterflies of the Amazon, Morpho didius and Morpho sulkowskyi among them, owe their color to light refracted through the scales of the wing rather than pigment. Swallowtails include Papilio ulysses of Papua New Guinea and northern Australia, Papilio blumei of Sulawesi and Papilio karna of Indonesia.

The jungle nymph Heteropteryx dilatata of Malaysia, Goliathus orientalis, a Goliath beetle from Central and East Africa, lanternflies of the Fulgoridae family and the giant grasshopper Titanacris albipes show the extremes of form. A grid of framed butterflies on a gallery wall, or a single beetle on a bookcase, brings the precision of natural history and a jolt of color.