Crustacea Division

Crustacea Division

The Ohio State University Museum of Zoology Crustacea Collection is a unit of the Department of Evolution, Ecology and Organismal Biology within the OSU Museum of Biological Diversity. The collection primarily contains North American freshwater crayfish (Arthropoda: Cruscatcea: Decapoda: Astacidea), with more than 25,000 specimens in over 9500 catalogued lots. It is the second largest catalogued collection of crayfish in the world. Only the Smithsonian's collection is larger.

Aquatic invertebrates like crayfish are both highly imperiled by anthropogenic change and under-studied in terms of their biology and biodiversity. Historical collections like ours provide a way to understand the native range of species under threat and to capture the anatomical and genetic diversity of populations that have been impacted by changes in the landscape.