The Division of Invertebrate Zoology (formerly the Divisions of Bivalve Mollusks, Gastropods, and Crustaceans, respectively) maintains some of the museum's largest and most-visited collections. Though the Division exists mainly to maintain, grow, and provide access to our collections, we have a long history of deploying taxonomic knowledge in the service of local and international conservation efforts, and we continue this work through our ongoing collaborations with the Ohio Department of Natural Resources (ODNR) Division of Wildlife and the Columbus Zoo and Aquarium. These organizations are the principal partners with whom we run the Watters Aquatic Conservation Center (WACC), our freshwater mussel propagation and research facility.
Mollusks
The majority of the invertebrate specimens in our collections are mollusks. Our collections contain ~1 million dry and >110,000 fluid-preserved molluscan specimens in ~115,000 cataloged lots (of which ~27,000 are fluid-preserved). At least 100,000 lots worth of high-quality backlog (identified, with good locality data) are estimated to be present in the collection. Catalogued lots from the mollusk collections are cited in the literature using the prefix “OSUM”.
A recent paper by Sierwald et al. (2017) shows that we have the 13th largest collection of mollusks in North America by number of lots, and that our collection quadrupled in size in the period between 1975 and 2017, making us the second fastest-growing mollusk collection in the country over the last half century.
Bivalves
The bivalve collection contains ~80,000 catalogued lots, 99% of which are from the US and Canada. 96% of the lots are species of the family Unionidae (freshwater mussels). It is the largest collection of freshwater bivalves in the world by volume, number of specimens, and number of lots.
Gastropods
The gastropod collection, catalogued separately and stored in a neighboring room, is smaller, though more diverse taxonomically and geographically. It contains ~32,000 lots of land, freshwater, and marine snails from around the world, and is the 3rd largest collection of North American pleurocerid snails in the world.
Types, Vouchers, and Historic Collections
The division has relatively few type specimens (<20 primary and <200 secondary types), but does serve as an important repository for tens of thousands of voucher specimens cited in the scientific literature and government reports. There are historically important collections from early American freshwater malacologists such as Henry Moores, Samuel P. Hildreth, William Holden, Isaac Lea, Thomas Lea, Timothy Abbott Conrad, James Lewis, and others. See this page for details on historic collections present in the Division.
Geographic and Taxonomic Strengths
The main strengths of the mollusk collection are its large lots of rare, extinct, and endangered species native to the United States, particularly unionid bivalves and pleurocerid snails from the Midwest (Ohio, Wisconsin, Indiana, Illinois) and southeast (Kentucky, Tennessee, West Virginia, Alabama), which are both global biodiversity hotspots of freshwater species. Secondary strengths are our large proportion of fluid preserved lots, detailed ecological and locality data, and meticulous physical curation. These strengths reflect the research interests and lifelong collecting efforts of the previous curators Drs. David H. Stansbery, Carol B. Stein, and G. Thomas Watters.
Crustaceans
The collection primarily contains North American freshwater crayfish (Arthropoda: Cruscatcea: Decapoda: Astacidea), with more than 74,000 specimens in over 11,000 catalogued lots. It is the 4th largest collection of crayfish in the world, and is an important hub for North American crayfish research and conservation. The collection is rich in type and voucher specimens deposited by astacologists R. F. Thoma, M. G. Glon, R. F. Jezerinac, Z. Loughman, and others.
Aquatic invertebrates like crayfish are both highly imperiled by anthropogenic change and their biology and biodiversity are understudied. Our collection provides crucial insights into the native ranges of species under threat and provides a snapshot of the anatomical and genetic diversity of populations across the country that have been impacted by changes in the landscape and water quality over the last century.
General Invertebrates
The Division maintains a miscellaneous collection of invertebrate taxa from other phyla, though these collections are comparatively small. Important material includes the parasitic worm collection of the late professor and parasitologist Dr. John L. Crites, a collection of marine invertebrates from the OSU Zoological expeditions to Andros Island in the Bahamas, and the marine invertebrate colections of the Oberlin College and Ohio Wesleyan University Museums.