NYTimes.com Article: Florida to Get Big Butterfly Center

[Mike Quinn]

(This article has been cross posted to multiple ento lists. Mike Quinn)

This article is from NYTimes.com 


March 20, 2001 

Florida to Get Big Butterfly Center


By STEVE COATES

At a time when many natural history museums are scaling back their
entomological departments, an unusual private donation will enable
the University of Florida to build the world's largest research and
education center dedicated to the study of butterflies and moths.

 Project leaders say the new complex, the McGuire Center for
Lepidoptera, will be finished in 2003 and will house at least six
million specimens, one of the largest collections in the United
States, representing a significant percentage of all existing
species.

 It will also differ from many institutions in its emphasis on
conservation and related environmental issues like biodiversity,
climate change and habitat loss, said Dr. Thomas C. Emmel, a
professor of zoology at Florida, who is to be the center's first
director.

 "A primary mission will be to reach agreements with countries
around the world for exploring their biodiversity," said Dr. Emmel,
who is well known among lepidopterists for his role in efforts to
save the Schaus swallowtail, an endangered butterfly in South
Florida. He noted that governments in less-developed countries
often depended on biodiversity surveys to enable them to set aside
land for preservation as national parks.

 Dr. Edward O. Wilson, a Harvard biologist and biodiversity expert,
said of the project: "As it is realized, it will be the major
center for the study of biodiversity in the world. It comes at a
critical time for the conservation of invertebrates, which tend to
get the short end of scientific and environmental effort."

 Much of the collection will be formed from the substantial but
scattered holdings that already belong to the university and the
state of Florida, including the collections of the Allyn Museum of
Entomology in Sarasota and the Florida State Collection of
Arthropods in Gainesville. Other donations and acquisitions are
soon expected to bring the number of specimens to more than six
million, but there will be enough expansion space to double or
triple that figure over the next couple of decades, Dr. Emmel said.

 The initial donation of $4.2 million for the complex was made
late last year by Dr. William W. McGuire, the chairman of
UnitedHealth Group, and his wife, Nadine M. McGuire. The gift is
the largest private donation for insect systematics ever made in
the United States, Dr. Emmel said. A matching grant from the State
of Florida will help complete the project.

 Dr. McGuire, a medical doctor who is also an accomplished amateur
lepidopterist, said he chose the University of Florida because it
had continued to expand its collections- based programs while many
other major universities and public institutions were cutting back.

 Current plans call for the construction of a three-story building
on the Gainesville campus with 40,000 square feet of offices,
laboratories and collection space. That is about four times the
room devoted to butterflies and moths at any other institution, Dr.
Emmel said. There will also be a large library, a public museum, a
live butterfly exhibit, a butterfly garden and an auditorium for
conferences.

 Lepidopterists said they were impressed with plans for staffing
levels, with 10 to 12 full-time curators and professors and up to
15 visiting scholars and 30 graduate students at a time.

 "That's far and away more than anyone else has," said Dr.
Frederick H. Rindge, emeritus curator of lepidoptera at the
American Museum of Natural History. He and one scientific assistant
manage the five million specimens at their museum, he said.

 The Smithsonian Institution estimates it has between five million
and six million specimens. As older foundations, it and the
American Museum of Natural History also own a relatively high
percentage of so- called holotypes, specimens that define a species
and are thus most crucial for taxonomy. 

 The largest organized collection of lepidoptera in the world is
the 8.7 million specimens at the Natural History Museum in London,
including some 60 percent of the world's holotypes. The Natural
History Museum in Paris is said to have some 10 million butterflies
and moths, but many of those have never been sorted.    
            

http://www.nytimes.com/2001/03/20/science/20MOTH.html?ex=986101877&ei=1&en=1
16f57cce36193f2

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