Station Linné’s Insect Collections

In collaboration with the Swedish Museum of Natural History in Stockholm, and with financial support from the SLU Swedish Species Information Centre in Uppsala, Station Linné has built one of the world’s largest wet collections of insects, with a strong emphasis on Swedish material.

Support for biological collections from the Swedish Taxonomy Initiative enables the curation and digitisation of both the research station’s wet and dry collections. Station Linné has also adopted a collections management policy developed in accordance with the guidelines of the Swedish National Heritage Board.

An extensive and fully traceable collection

All wet material is stored at −20°C in complete darkness in two separate walk-in freezers, providing a combined storage capacity of more than 250 m³. Every sample is carefully labelled, making it possible to trace each individual among the tens of millions of insects in our collections and link it to its associated metadata.

Most of the insects are preserved in unsorted samples, many of which have been metabarcoded. However, a substantial proportion of the collected material has been pre-sorted to at least order level, and much of it has been sorted further to family or subfamily level.

It is important to note that processed bulk samples are only mildly lysed. The insects therefore remain in the samples in a condition that largely corresponds to that of the originally collected material.

An international research resource

Station Linné’s collections attract considerable interest from taxonomic experts around the world. To date, hundreds of experts from at least 25 countries have contributed to the identification of our insects.

Molecular methods now make it possible to generate species lists directly from bulk samples without prior taxonomic sorting. These data are published open access and are freely available online.

Despite Sweden’s strong tradition in systematics and taxonomy, molecular methods have also highlighted the substantial gaps that remain in our knowledge of insect diversity – even here in Sweden, the homeland of Linnaeus. Preliminary results indicate that as many as a quarter, and possibly up to half, of Sweden’s insect species may remain undiscovered and, in many cases, scientifically undescribed.

Access to the collections

Every individual specimen in our collections has scientific value, whether or not it has yet been identified. Our ambition is to preserve and ultimately identify all specimens, and the material must therefore be handled with great care. It is therefore not permitted to open an unsorted, metabarcoded bulk sample simply to extract a particular taxon, regardless of how interesting the sequenced material in that sample may be.

If a researcher is interested in a particular taxon or record, the relevant sample must first be sorted according to Station Linné’s established workflows. This minimises handling and damage to delicate taxa, which might otherwise easily be damaged or disintegrate when a sample is searched.

If you are interested in particular specimens or taxa, please contact us so that we can discuss the best way to make the material available.

[Read our Loan Policy → link to the left]

Interested in working with our collections?

Are you a taxonomic expert interested in material from Station Linné’s collections? Or do you have questions about a particular sample, taxon or record?

Please get in touch – we look forward to hearing from you!

Page updated 2026-09-23