It is almost unthinkable that one person could collect — by hand — seven-and-a-half million of anything without it being the work of a whole lifetime. But the Alfred Kinsey gall wasp collection at the AMNH was reportedly gathered over the course of just a few years. According to the historian Michael Yudell, during which the scientist is estimated to have traveled more than 18,000 miles, traveling through 36 states, coast-to-coast, often camping while he collected his specimens (via Internet Archive).

Gall wasp larvae develop on the leaves and stems of plants and trees in small pods — or ‘galls’ — which were the objects that Kinsey would have been seeking to send back to his colleagues, who would then wait for the insects to hatch. Galls can come in all shapes and sizes, according to the AMNH, varying from plant to plant. 

According to Jim Carpenter, the Curator of Division of Invertebrate Zoology at the AMNH, such enormous collections are vital to the work of scientists who study the species: “The larger [a collection] is, the more likely it is that you’ll have more species [and] reflect actual diversity of nature in the world,” he explained, per the AMNH. Today, Kinsey’s specimens make up a vital part of the museum’s insect collection of 18 million. They are regularly loaned out to researchers studying “how [insect] populations react in response to factors like environmental change.” The wasps in Kinsey’s collection are now considered “ancient,” and offer a valuable opportunity for researchers to extract and study “ancient DNA,” and thereby correlate the genetic impact of the environment on animal life.