Collections
The Fernald Collections
Live Insect Zoo
The UMass Insect Zoo is solely maintained by volunteers from the Fernald Club, and is located in the second-floor hallway of Fernald Hall, opposite the Insects in the Hallway display. We keep a variety of live insects and other arthropods in the zoo for educational outreach, and also because they're lots of fun!
December 2023: The Insect Zoo currently has hissing and discoid cockroaches, a stripe-knee tarantula, desert beetles, mantids, a fiery searcher beetle, a whipspider, millipedes, isopods, and more!
Want to handle the live insects? Contact us at fernaldclubumass@gmail.com to set up an insect-handling session.
Insects in the Hallway
Located in the second-floor hallway of Fernald Hall, the Insects in the Hallway display showcases the enormous diversity of insects to the public. A separate display shows a wide range of locally-collected Massachusetts species.
Read The Massachusetts Daily Collegian's article about the Fernald Hall insect collections.
Insect Museum
The Insect Museum is UMass Amherst's scientific insect collection, comprising over 100,000 specimens across many insect orders. It includes both local insects from the Amherst area and exotic species from around the world, and features many historic specimens from the late 1800s and early 1900s.
Contact us at fernaldclubumass@gmail.com if you are interested in an educational viewing of the collection or want to learn more about it.
