Invertebrate Zoology Collections at the Museum of Biological Diversity (OSUM)

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.