Love in amber to join NHM treasures in Reading

Flies that were preserved in amber 40 million years ago while in the act of copulation are among the treasures that will come to a proposed Reading collections and research centre, the Natural History Museum has said.

Pieces of heart-shaped amber and copal, as well as the amber containing the pair of flies trapped in copulation, have been digitised by the Natural History Museum in time for Valentine’s Day.

Available on the Museum’s Data Portal, nearly 3,000 pieces of amber have been digitised for the first time as part of NHM Unlocked, an ambitious programme to build a new centre at Thames Valley Science Park, equipped with purpose-built collections storage, digitisation suites and laboratories.

The NHM’s amber collection is of great historic significance, some of which dates to the original collection of Sir Hans Sloane that was acquired as the founding of the British Museum after his death in 1753. This would eventually become the collection of the Natural History Museum.

Among the material digitised by the Museum are a pair of flies of the family Dolichopodidae, unusually trapped in coitus activity and preserved in amber for millions of years. Sticky tree resin often traps insects before it hardens and forms amber, though it is rarer to find such specific insect behaviour preserved in this way.

One of the heart-shaped pieces is of Baltic origin, dating back around 44 million years, and the other is an example of copal from southern Africa – a much younger “sub-fossil” equivalent of amber formed in only the last few million years. 

The heart-shaped Baltic amber also contains a non-biting midge (Chironomidae). Advanced analysis could reveal insights into the environment of these now-extinct midges, who lived during the Eocene Epoch.

A recent study by scientists at the universities of Lincoln, Leicester, Dundee and Uppsala utilised micro-CT scanning techniques on a piece of Eocene Baltic amber in the NHM collection containing a bush cricket (Orthoptera). The scans revealed the structure of the bush cricket’s “ear”, and it was determined it could hear ultrasounds beyond the human hearing range.

Dr Richie Howard, Curator of Fossil Arthropods, said 'Digitisation of these fantastic amber specimens means that we can further unlock their research potential by sharing their basic data freely through our online portal. This allows parties without prior intimate knowledge of the collection to come up with new ideas and hypotheses to test on our specimens. NHM Unlocked will provide more opportunities to digitise our world-class collections and to continue to reveal their scientific value through on-site laboratories.’

The Natural History Museum’s plans to build a collections, digitisation and research centre at the University of Reading’s Thames Valley Science Park by 2031 will accelerate the digital discoverability of specimens like this amber, thereby increasing accessibility. Digitisation opens the collections to global communities and improves searchability to make collections-based research more efficient. Having accurate records of the Museum’s collection allows the Museum to preserve the collection for future generations.

NHM Unlocked is enabled through a substantial £201 million investment from the Government as part of its priority to increase investment in UK science, research and development.