Digitisation at the Hungarian Natural History Museum

The complete digitisation of the Lepidoptera collection of the Hungarian Natural History Museum (MTM) began in March 2021. In the process, high-resolution digital images are made of the drawers at a workstation set up in one of the rooms of the Lepidoptera collection. The workflow was planned, and is supervised, by the staff of the Lepidoptera collection (Zsolt Bálint, Gergely Katona and Balázs Tóth); the high-resolution digital camera is operated by Andrea Bényi.

Together with collections held on deposit, the MTM preserves nearly 1.8 million Lepidoptera specimens in about 12,000 glass-topped museum drawers. Of the specimens, kept dry and protected from light, the oldest demonstrably date from before the 1800s. The contents of the drawers can in broad terms be classified as follows: (1) main collection, (2) supplementary collection parts and (3) collection parts awaiting processing.

Zsolt Bálint, chief curator of the Hungarian Natural History Museum. Photo: Dániel Bedő©

Main collection: consists of two parts, (a) the national (Carpathian Basin) collection and (b) the world collection. Specimens are classified on the basis of their taxonomic position. In the national collection the Lepidoptera material is determined to species level and recorded in a cabinet register. The data of the specimens of some collection parts have been recorded in a database (revised groups, protected or especially rare Lepidoptera). The world collection, likewise held in a cabinet register, is mostly determined to species level, but numerous parts need taxonomic revision because of the expansions caused by continuously arriving specimens, so these are under almost continuous reorganisation.

Supplementary collections: this includes the collection parts that we handle separately from the main collection. These are (a) collection parts of significance for the history of science or (b) special collection parts. Of significance for the history of science are the series of drawers made up of Lepidoptera specimens surviving from the classical period of lepidopterology (18th–19th centuries) (Frivaldszky, Koy, Ochsenheimer and Treitschke), while the developmental stages, the herbarium of Lepidoptera leaf mines and the collection of genitalia preparations count as special.

The collection parts awaiting processing contain (a) properly prepared, labelled materials, mostly arranged by genus, which we can assign to the main collection only after the taxonomic revision of the relevant collection part; or (b) specimens that are waiting to be prepared and labelled so that scientific and museological work can begin on them and they can enter the main collection.

Below we present one historical collection and a few collection parts. In these, the species name and taxonomic classification, collecting locality, date and collector of every single specimen are available in a database.

Photo: Hungarian Natural History Museum©

Ochsenheimer collection

692 species, 1,554 specimens, 30 drawers

Ferdinand Ochsenheimer (1767–1822), a Viennese actor, was the first to publish a multi-part monographic work on European Lepidoptera. His collection was purchased by the National Museum in 1823. A significant part of it was destroyed in the flood of 1838. The surviving specimens were assigned to the main collection around the turn of the century. Later Lajos Kovács (1900–1971) searched them out again and collected them into a few drawers. Based on his notes, it seems he intended to identify the type specimens and to make a catalogue of the collected material.

The world collection of the snout-butterfly forms

9 species-group names, 219 specimens, 3 drawers

The antiquity of the subfamily (Libytheinae; “snout butterflies”) is proven by fossil remains. Several of its species disappeared in the modern era and can practically be considered extinct. Because of this, the snout butterflies represent the butterfly subfamily with the fewest species. The museum’s world collection holds half of the known species, including specimens caught by one of our famous collectors (Kálmán Kittenberger, Sámuel Fenichel, László Almásy). The only European species conquered the Carpathian Basin in the 20th century. This process can be followed well in the one drawer’s worth of material in the national collection.

Lepidoptera collection during digitisation.

Photo: Dániel Bedő©

The world collection of the Csillangó relatives

90 species-group names, 1,069 specimens, 67 drawers

The representatives of the tribe (Troidini; “birdwings”) are among the most spectacular butterflies and are in great demand among private collectors. For this reason, strict international conventions regulate their collection, trade and study. In addition to specimens of many rare species, the MTM collection is of significance for the history of science, since it contains collection material caught by many great travellers (e.g. Lajos Biró, Sámuel Fenichel, Gyula Madarász) and also a few type specimens. The collection also provides important sample material for materials-science and biophysical research. The data of the specimens are kept on record.

The Carpathian Basin “Pepecs” collection

81 species, 16,163 specimens, 41 drawers

The representatives of the tribe (Eupitheciini; “pugs”) were studied intensively already in the middle of the 19th century, in the time of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy, by Friedrich Treitschke, Imre Frivaldszky and Ottó Bohatsch. Many consider it one of the most difficult Lepidoptera groups to identify, and at the same time the most varied. Hungarian researchers’ interest in the group did not flag later either. It was Lajos Kovács (1900–1971) who revised the distribution of the species found in the Hungarian fauna, and his student András Vojnits (1941–2021) became the specialist of the group, discovering and describing several hundred species for science. The Eupitheciini part of the world collection (not shown here) is of similar size but much more significant in number of species and very rich in type material.

Photo: Hungarian Natural History Museum©

The world collection of the iridescent forms

57 species-group names, 669 specimens, 17 drawers

The subfamily (Apaturinae; “iridescent butterflies”) is distributed across the whole globe. It reaches particularly high species numbers in the tropics of the Old World and on the American continent. In Africa it is not diverse. Only three species occur in the Carpathian Basin, but this collection part too is significant (ten drawers, nearly a thousand specimens). The males are mostly strikingly coloured, because the scales on the surface of their wings are iridescent. Most recently these too are being intensively studied by materials scientists.

Photo: Hungarian Natural History Museum©

The author of the article is Zsolt Bálint, chief curator of the Hungarian Natural History Museum.

The cover image was taken by Dániel Bedő©