Welcome to the web-site of the Tasmanian Forest Insect Collection (TFIC)

The TFIC was founded by the Tasmanian Forestry Commission (now Forestry Tasmania) in the 1970's, as a repository for insect specimens collected through various research programmes in Tamania's public forests. The past decade has seen the TFIC expand almost exponentially, as the relevance of insects to a whole range of forestry-related research fields has been more fully realised. Most accessions to the TFIC are still in connection with Forestry Tasmania's research programmes, but the collection also receives accessions from other sources, such as the University of Tasmania.

This web-site features the part of the TFIC dedicated to beetles (Coleoptera), since most historical and recent accessions have been of these taxa, and because their continued use in research ensures a high standard of curation of specimens and data. The TFIC currently houses over 120,000 databased beetle specimens of close to 2000 species, all of them dry-mounted. Some 60% of these species remain to be formally identified, either because of lack of access to comparable identified material or because they are likely to represent as-yet undescribed species.  Such species are given standardised code-names that indicate the lowest-ranking higher taxon to which they are thought to belong (e.g. Aleocharinae TFIC sp 10). There is a web-page for each beetle species in the TFIC, plus pages on the higher taxa in which they are nested, and additional pages on publications and indexing. The species pages include information on taxonomy, morphology and ecology, where available. They also include a distribution map, based on specimens held in the TFIC - the map on the right shows the origins across Tasmania of all the collection's beetle accessions. Over time, these features will be augmented by further images of the species concerned. Images will also increasingly be a feature of the higher-taxon pages.

The web-site is still in development.  Over the coming months and years, you should expect to see regular enhancements to both the content and the 'look-and-feel' of the site.

Acknowledgements
Thanks to Rob Musk for devising a means of automating the updating of distribution maps, and to Paul Lefort for tuition in the use of the Ruby compiler software used to create these pages from templates and to add content from an Access database maintained by Forestry Tasmania.

Information
The web-pages on this web-site are generated from an underlying database. These can be cited as Grove, S.J. (2010). Tasmanian Forest Insect Collection web-site and database (Hobart: Forestry Tasmania) respectively. If you would like to contribute specimens to the TFIC, or have any comments that will help improve the content or appearance of these pages, then please contact us here.

Disclaimer
Whilst great care is taken to accurately identify specimens in the TFIC and to allocate them the most appropriate taxonomic names available to us, we cannot guarantee that all identifications are accurate, nor that the taxa to which they have been allocated are currently valid. Commentaries on habitat, distribution and biology are also provisional and are subject to change as new information comes to light.

Last build: Thu Dec 02 11:22:03 Tasmania Daylight Time 2010