Free museum entry for New Zealanders and people living in New Zealand
Open every day 10am-6pm
(except Christmas Day)
Free museum entry for New Zealanders and people living in New Zealand
Te Papa researchers: Julia Kasper, Phil Sirvid, and Harry Grimwood
G.V. Hudson was a pioneer of New Zealand entomology and extensively collected moths from around Karori and Wilton, Wellington. Almost 100 years later, this research project will record moths from the same area (today Zealandia and Ōtari-Wilton's Bush) to see if any change in Lepidoptera diversity has occurred.
With this project we hope to better understand the effect of land use and climate change on moth diversity. A public engagement programme seeks volunteers to assist with night trapping events and citizen science recordings in iNaturalist.
Representative publications:
Brockelsby, W. D., Edwards, E., Grimwood, H., Sirvid, P. J., Fleury, K., Selwyn, R., … Kasper, J. K. (2024). Assessment of moth diversity in the Zealandia ecosanctuary through a community science initiative. New Zealand Entomologist, 47(2), 53–69.
A moth drawer of the Hudson collection. Photo by JC Stahl Te Papa
For its wide systematic coverage as well as its historical and scientific value, the Hudson Collection is perhaps the best private insect collection ever made in New Zealand. It contains several thousand dry mounted insects collected mostly by George Vernon Hudson (1867-1946), but also by his wife, his daughter, and by other entomologists of that time.
Entomologist George Hudson’s New Zealand Moths and Butterflies contains over 400 life-size painted figures, with 95 pen-and-ink drawings. View the illustrations on Collections Online.
Insects, arachnids, myriapods, bugs, creepy-crawlies, moths, butterflies and their allies.
