Grasshopper gaps and goals, the Acrididae of the Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History collection

The Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History (SBMNH) has an insect collection containing over 350,000 specimens. Given the research interests of previous curators and those who have donated specimens, the best-represented orders in the collection are Coleoptera and Lepidoptera. The Orthoptera collection, on the other hand, consisted of 11 drawers of largely unsorted and unidentified specimens. While the collection is small in comparison to other orders, two groups that are well represented are species that regularly fly to lights, which were collected as bycatch while light trapping, and material from the Channel Islands. This talk will go into more detail on the strengths of the SBMNH Orthoptera collection, taxonomic and regional gaps that need filling, and the survey efforts being conducted to fill those gaps.