Stick and Leaf Insects (Phasmida)
- Comments
-
Glasgow Museums has a collection of 31 stick and leaf insect specimens (Phasmida) which date from 1939 to the present.
This collection contains dried, pinned and card-mounted adult insects, more than half of which were collected in Trinidad by Glasgow Museums’ former Keeper of Natural History, E. G. Hancock during his field trips with Glasgow University in the 1990s. Apart from the Trinidadian collection, very few of the specimens have any associated data and even fewer have been identified to species-level. The earliest dated specimen is from 1939 but there are undated specimens that may predate this. There are specimens of the Common Stick Insect from an outbreak that occurred in the glasshouses of the Glasgow Botanical Gardens in recent years, and of the longest Australian insect, the Titan Stick Insect (Acrophylla titan), whose females can reach 30cm in length.
About stick and leaf insects
There are approximately 3,000 species of stick and leaf insects worldwide, none of which are native to the British Isles. They are plant eaters that are most active by night. Their common names reflect the fact that they resemble sticks or leaves. - Broader term
- Staff Contact