Description
The Division of Invertebrate Zoology at The Ohio State University Museum of Biological Diversity is a major center for research on the evolution, ecology, taxonomy and conservation of global invertebrate biodiversity. We maintain several important natural history collections of invertebrates: Bivalve Mollusks, Gastropods (and other non-bivalve mollusks), Crustaceans, and General Invertebrates. Though we have specimens collected as early as the 1810s, the collections formally began in the 1890s as part of the "O.S.U. Museum of Zoology". The collections were then managed by the Ohio Historical Society (OHS) which operated on OSU's campus as "The Ohio State Museum" from about 1925 to the 1960s. In 1970, the University became the primary custodian of all the zoological collections aside from a small synoptic set of Ohio material retained by OHS. The invertebrate collections were historically curated independently as 3 separate Divisions of the museum, but have been been managed as one Invertebrate Zoology Division of the Museum of Biological Diversity since 2024. The invertebrate zoology collections contain >1.5 million dry and >900,000 fluid-preserved specimens in ca. 125,000 cataloged lots. Our collecting and curatorial efforts are predominantly focused on documenting the worldwide distribution and diversity of non-marine (i.e. land and freshwater) invertebrates, specifically mollusks and crustaceans. We maintain the largest collection of freshwater bivalves in the world, and our gastropod and crayfish collections are also among the worlds' largest.
Data Records
The data in this occurrence resource has been published as a Darwin Core Archive (DwC-A), which is a standardized format for sharing biodiversity data as a set of one or more data tables. The core data table contains 80,334 records.
This IPT archives the data and thus serves as the data repository. The data and resource metadata are available for download in the downloads section. The versions table lists other versions of the resource that have been made publicly available and allows tracking changes made to the resource over time.
Versions
The table below shows only published versions of the resource that are publicly accessible.
How to cite
Researchers should cite this work as follows:
Shoobs N (2025). Invertebrate Zoology Collections at the Museum of Biological Diversity (OSUM). Version 1.1. Museum of Biological Diversity, The Ohio State University. Occurrence dataset. https://asc-ipt.asc.ohio-state.edu/mbd/resource?r=osum_invertebrate_zoology&v=1.1
Rights
Researchers should respect the following rights statement:
The publisher and rights holder of this work is Museum of Biological Diversity, The Ohio State University. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (CC-BY-NC 4.0) License.
GBIF Registration
This resource has been registered with GBIF, and assigned the following GBIF UUID: a0551854-61b9-4c1b-ad08-7f10af835b6a. Museum of Biological Diversity, The Ohio State University publishes this resource, and is itself registered in GBIF as a data publisher endorsed by GBIF-US.
Keywords
Occurrence; Specimen
Contacts
- Metadata Provider ●
- Originator ●
- Point Of Contact
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5272-6255
Geographic Coverage
Worldwide.
| Bounding Coordinates | South West [-40.779, -162.069], North East [68.356, 178.423] |
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Taxonomic Coverage
N/A
| Kingdom | Animalia |
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| Phylum | Mollusca |
| Class | Bivalvia |
| Order | Venerida, Unionida |
| Family | Mactridae, Unionidae |
Temporal Coverage
| Start Date / End Date | 1800-07-20 / 2025-03-30 |
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Collection Data
| Collection Name | Bivalve Mollusks |
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| Collection Identifier | d139baa6-7fd3-4cba-b4b0-a2bd2ec2c9b8 |
| Parent Collection Identifier | 4e84a395-fa1a-4bd4-aa75-c0e18610e0ce |
| Collection Name | Gastropods and Other Mollusks |
|---|---|
| Collection Identifier | ac3cb3f6-9761-4bfa-bff5-b16a152b46d6 |
| Parent Collection Identifier | 4e84a395-fa1a-4bd4-aa75-c0e18610e0ce |
| Collection Name | Crustaceans |
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| Collection Identifier | 34b8abb6-c40d-4dff-a91b-46b8138df0b1 |
| Parent Collection Identifier | 4e84a395-fa1a-4bd4-aa75-c0e18610e0ce |
| Specimen preservation methods | Dried, Alcohol, Microscopic preparation, Deep frozen |
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| Curatorial Units | Between 120,000 and 130,000 lots , Between 2,400,000 and 3,000,000 specimens |
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Additional Metadata
| Alternative Identifiers | https://asc-ipt.asc.ohio-state.edu/mbd/resource?r=osum_invertebrate_zoology |
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