Allyn/Miller Research and Collections Fund

This fund was established by family and friends in 2008 in memory of Arthur C. Allyn, Jr. and Lee D. Miller, to support the curation and research of the Lepidoptera collections held at the McGuire Center for Lepidoptera and Biodiversity.

Lee D. Miller and his wife, Jacqueline, were curators of Lepidoptera, and in 2004, moved their offices’ laboratories and more than one million specimens of butterflies and moths from the Allyn Museum in Sarasota, FL to the museum’s new McGuire Center for Lepidoptera and Biodiversity. Lee was a curator with the FLMNH since 1981 and was a professor in the Department of Entomology and Nematology. He was also a retired judge of the American Orchid Society. Lee Miller passed away on April 5, 2008.

Through a generous gift by its founder, Arthur C. Allyn, Jr., the Florida Museum of Natural History acquired the Allyn Museum of Entomology in Sarasota, FL in 1979. With this addition, the FLMNH received the largest butterfly collection of the time in the Western Hemisphere and gained two curators of Lepidoptera.