Some preserved specimens of the lepidopteran collection of the Royal Museum for Central Africa were used in a pilot DNA barcoding study. They differed in age, the applied preservation methods and collection sites. Thereby short and standard DNA barcode sequesces were obtained, and species assignments based on neighbour-joining tree reconstruction were carried out and compared with morphological identification. Our results show that DNA barcoding approach is able to distinguish lymantriid species on an efficient way.