Bishop Museum

The State Museum of Natural and Cultural History
Honolulu, Hawai‘i

Welcome to our Searchable
Arthropod Type Specimen Database

(data last revised 05 October 1997; 15962 records)

Main search fields

Genus:         Species: 

Describer:     Year Published:    

Order:                    Family:  

Locality:      (Note: may take 30 seconds or more. See notes below.)
(Hint: if searching for a last name, put % at the end to match any initials or first name. To look for specimens in the 1980s, put 198% in the year field. To search for Hawai‘i (the Big Island) only, type " hawaii" in the Locality field , with the leading space, but without the double quotes, of course.)

About the Type Specimen Database

How to search

Fill out the query form above and submit it. The result will come back to you with a list of those taxa that fill the criteria you delimit. Remember, when you fill in a searchable field, you introduce a limiting factor to your search. If you do not know what to put into a particular field or if you wish to have the database search all possible records for that field, leave it blank.

The search fields use the SQL convention that % matches 0 or more characters of any value. For example, to search for a genus that starts with "Eo", type "eo%" in the genus field (without the double quotes, of course). Searching is case-insensitive. To match any single character, type "_" (without the double quotes).

For ease of use, the Locality search automatically places the wild card % at the beginning and end of your search field. This makes it easy to search for California by typing only "calif". Note, since "hawaii" would match both Hawaiian Islands as well as Hawai‘i , to search for Hawai‘i (the Big Island) only, search for " hawaii" (with the leading space, but without the double quotes, of course). The Locality information is subdivided by colons. For example,

Hawaiian Islands: Hawai‘i : Kawaihae Bay: Spencer Beach

(Search fields with a colon do not work. We're not sure why.)

Search times may take 30 seconds or longer, depending on the load on the server. Search times may be longer if a large number of items are returned, since the returned list is sorted by genus and species.

Note that the returned records are displayed in a table. Most modern web browsers, such as the current versions of Netscape Navigator, Mosaic and the Microsoft Internet Explorer support tables, but the America Online Web Browser 1.0 for the Macintosh does not.

Powered by the MiniSQL Database and by PHP, a server-side scripting language.

Thank you to their authors, David Hughes (MiniSQL) and Rasmus Lerdorf (PHP).

Financial support for the authority files produced by Bishop Museum's Hawaiian Biological Survey was generously given by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation.

Specimen-level databasing and assemblage of citation records for candidate species and species of concern was supported by the National Biological Service.

The search interface for this database was designed by Jeffrey Sue.
If you have any comments/suggestions concerning this database, send e-mail to Richard Pyle at: deepreef@bishopmuseum.org
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BISHOP MUSEUM
The State Museum of Natural and Cultural History
For Museum Information, call (808) 847-3511

Bishop Museum 1525 Bernice Street Honolulu Hawai'i 96817-0916
Revised 17 July 2001 by nle