page_title: Entomology
section_title: History
hierarchical_section_title: Entomology / History
caption_attribution_description: Plate from Transactions of the Entomological Society of London Volume 5 1848
context_page_description: Entomology is the scientific study of insects, a branch of zoology. In the past the term "insect" was vaguer, and historically the definition of entomology included the study of terrestrial animals in other arthropod groups or other phyla, such as arachnids, myriapods, earthworms, land snails, and slugs. This wider meaning may still be encountered in informal use.
  Like several of the other fields that are categorized within zoology, entomology is a taxon-based category; any form of scientific study in which there is a focus on insect-related inquiries is, by definition, entomology. Entomology therefore overlaps with a cross-section of topics as diverse as molecular genetics, behavior, biomechanics, biochemistry, systematics, physiology, developmental biology, ecology, morphology, and paleontology.
  At some 1.3 million described species, insects account for more than two-thirds of all known organisms, some dating back around 400 million years. They have many kinds of interactions with humans and other forms of life on earth.
context_section_description: Entomology is rooted in nearly all human cultures from prehistoric times, primarily in the context of agriculture (especially biological control and beekeeping).  The natural philosopher Pliny the Elder, (23 - 79 AD) wrote a book on the kinds of Insects, while the scientist of Kufa, Ibn al-A‘rābī (760 - 845 AD) wrote a book on flies, Kitāb al-Dabāb (كتاب الذباب).  However scientific study in the modern sense began only as recently as the 16th century.
  William Kirby is widely considered as the father of entomology. In collaboration with William Spence, he published a definitive entomological encyclopedia, Introduction to Entomology, regarded as the subject's foundational text. He also helped to found the Royal Entomological Society in London in 1833, one of the earliest such societies in the world; earlier antecedents, such as the Aurelian society date back to the 1740s.
  Entomology developed rapidly in the 19th and 20th centuries, and was studied by large numbers of people, including such notable figures as Charles Darwin, Jean-Henri Fabre, Vladimir Nabokov, Karl von Frisch (winner of the 1973 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine), and two-time Pulitzer Prize winner E. O. Wilson.
  There has also been a history of people becoming entomologists through museum curation and research assistance, such as Sophie Lutterlough at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History. Insect identification is an increasingly common hobby, with butterflies and dragonflies being the most popular.
  Most insects can easily be recognized to order such as Hymenoptera (bees, wasps, and ants) or Coleoptera (beetles).  However, insects other than Lepidoptera (butterflies and moths) are typically identifiable to genus or species only through the use of Identification keys and Monographs. Because the class Insecta contains a very large number of species (over 330,000 species of beetles alone) and the characteristics separating them are unfamiliar, and often subtle (or invisible without a microscope), this is often very difficult even for a specialist. This has led to the development of automated species identification systems targeted on insects, for example, Daisy, ABIS, SPIDA and Draw-wing.
caption: Plate from Transactions of the Entomological Society, 1848.
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