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 The first contributions from Henri Pitter and Paul Biolley on Costa Rican insects appeared between 1892 and 1897, while working for the National Geographic Institute. They sent the samples to United States and Europe. Mister José Fidel Tristán and Biolley increased the collecting work and specimen determination.
Between 1930 and 1971, the entomological collection was about to disappear completely. The rescue, organizing and increasing collecting activities were retaken with the arrival of the new Museum Director, Luis Diego Gómez. In 1975, Felipe De Vries took charge and in 1979, Isidro Chacón and Angel Solís enriched the beetle’s collection in a very meaningful way from the taxonomic and geographic view.
During the last few years, the Entomologic Collection has specialized in daytime butterflies and it has become the most important daytime butterfly collection of Mesoamerica. Next to this accomplishment, there have been many scientific publications, exhibitions, workshops, chatters and other activities, as a result of different research projects linked to conserving the species.
The Entomologic Collection has 19.272 samples of daytime butterflies and 12.648 samples of other groups such as bumblebees, wasps, flies and bedbugs, among other less numerous groups.
The 70% of all butterfly species in Costa Rica are represented in the Daytime Butterfly Collection. It also has samples of 85 subspecies and 38 species of regional endemic daytime butterflies (Panama and Costa Rica) and 20 endemic daytime butterflies of Costa Rica. In addition, the butterfly collection keeps samples of every conservation area of Costa Rica, as from every life zone.
There is also a historic collection of 3.800 samples from early last century, collected mostly by José Fidel Tristán and Pablo Biolley.
The information on every entomologic sample is stored on an electronic data base, which guarantees a better use of the collection, its conservation and increase in an objective and scientific way
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