A new species of Chama (Bivalvia, Chamidae) from Mexico

The National Museum of Natural History is committed to long-term stewardship of collections and to supporting their use by scientists and the general public. This stewardship role is unique among other US natural history museums. As the nation’s natural history museum, the National Museum of Natural History has a mandated commitment to conserve and protect its collections in a manner that will assure their continued accessibility by future generations and maintain the National Museum of Natural History mission. A significant number of objects from the National Museum of Natural History are permanently stored at the Museum Support Center in Suitland, MD. This space not only includes collections from the National Museum of Natural History (NMNH), but also the Museum Conservation Institute (MCI), the National Museum of American History (NMAH), the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden (HMSG), the Freer Sackler Gallery (FSG) and the National Museum of African Art (AfA) as well as several other museums. In terms of collections access and use, the museum support center has a team, Collections Support Services (CSS), dedicated to collections’ long-term care and preservation. Collections Support Services provides access and support for the 730,000 square feet of collections housed at MSC. CSS staff perform a variety of technical and labor tasks related to the cleaning, preparation, packing, transport, unpacking, and permanent storage of objects and specimens. This includes building custom aluminum pallets for oversized objects and whale skull cradles. Moreover, while the use of palletized storage is not a new concept in museum storage, the construction of Pod 4 at the Museum Support Center in Suitland, MD posed some unique challenges for the permanent storage of oversized collections. Pod 4 provides continuous rows of 2', 4' and 8' deep cantilevered open racking from floor to ceiling (22 feet high), and allows palletized objects to be moved and placed in the racking via forklift. Traditional wooden pallets are unacceptable by archival standards, as they are acidic by nature, bulky, heavy, not fire-retardant, and prone to pest infestation. Collections Support Services circumvented these issues by establishing an innovative system of customized aluminum pallets for collections’ long-term care and preservation. These pallets are durable and lightweight, and must pass several quality control tests that include dropping and jarring. They are also designed with multiple functions in mind for ease of use, storage, transport, and maintenance.

By the late nineteenth century, as a consequence of the costly, far-flung, labor-intensive, and specimen-centered nature of the discipline, American vertebrate paleontology had become centralized at large collections maintained by a few universities and major natural history museums. Foremost among the latter group were the Academy of Natural Sciences, Philadelphia; the American Museum of Natural History, New York; the National Museum of Natural History, Washington, DC; the Carnegie Museum, Pittsburgh; and the Field Columbian Museum, Chicago. There is an extensive body of popular and historical literature reviewing the establishment and early development of the vertebrate paleontology programs at most of these institutions, especially the American Museum. The Field Columbian Museum, however, has received relatively little attention in this literature. The present paper begins to redress this imbalance by reviewing the establishment of vertebrate paleontology at the Field Columbian Museum from the museum's foundation in 1893, through the end of 1898, when the museum added a vertebrate paleontologist to its curatorial staff. An account of the Field Columbian Museum's first expedition for fossil vertebrates in the summer of 1898 is included.

The collections of Cryptophagidae beetles stored in the natural museums of Ukraine were studied: three academic and two university collections – State Museum of Natural History, National Museum of Natural History and I.I. Schmalhausen Institute of Zoology of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, Zoological Museum of T. Shevchenko Kyiv National University and Museum of Natural History of V. Karazin Kharkiv National University, and also author’s work collection. The volumes and the state of their preservation have been analyzed. The representation of different species in collections, as a whole, and in relation to the Carpathian fauna is evaluated. In general, museum collections contain 1346 samples of Cryptophagids, in each of which – about 210-340 individuals, all of them are stored in separate boxes and punctured by entomologic needles. The author's collection includes 1657 specimens of 57 species, which are mostly stored on cotton mattresses. All six collections include 122 species of 16 genera, containing from 21 to 85 species of this family. Some samples in collections have been lost for various reasons, in 10 cases there are only needles with labels without the samples themselves, therefore, some species (eg Cryptophagus nitidulus, C. hexagonalis) are represented in collections conditionally, only in labels. At the revision of materials attention is paid to taxonomic changes, through which in the publications and in the actual material different species or generic synonymic names were used. The author also took into account the uniqueness of each of the collections, which was determined by several important parameters, including the number of samples that are presented exclusively in some of the museum of species and genera of the family, the number of samples and type specimens in collection. For most of these parameters the leader is the collection of Zoological Museum of T. Shevchenko Kyiv National University. All data is included in the author's database, which contains summaries of annotations containing collections of samples, names of regions and localities of collection, dates, collectors, or owners of the collection, and also notes with clarifications of places or details of reidentifications.

The series of conferences ‘Natural History Museology in Ukraine’, launched in the autumn of 2009, celebrated its tenth anniversary in 2019. Ten years after its beginning, the fifth meeting of the conference cycle was held. The series of conferences was initiated by the Natural History Section of the Ukrainian branch of ICOM, and the main organizers of the first and all subsequent meetings were scientists from two academic museums — the State Museum of Natural History NAS of Ukraine (Lviv) and the National Museum of Natural History NAS of Ukraine (Kyiv). During these 10 years, five full-scale conferences were held: three in Kyiv, one in Kaniv, and one in Kamianets-Podilskyi. Traditionally, the conference is organized in autumn with an average interval of two years on topics related to scientific and educational activities and to the past of natural history museums. An overview of these conferences, their topics, dates, venues, and proceedings is presented. A detailed description of the events of the fifth conference held in Kyiv at the National Museum of Natural History of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine is given. Thirty-nine participants took part in this conference during the two full days of its work (the 7th and 8th of October), of which 20 made oral presentations, and a total of 80 articles were published. The most important events of the conference included a solemn session on the occasion of the 100th anniversary of the Zoological Museum of the All-Ukrainian Academy of Sciences (1919/1921–1934), which became one of the predecessor museums of the modern NMNH, a scientific session themed ‘Study and preservation of collections’, a session on ‘exhibition activities’, and a round table on the topic ‘Databases as tool for working with natural history collections’. The proceedings of the fifth conference were published as part of a series of publications titled ‘Natural History Museology’, which was initiated on the occasion of the fifth meeting and in order to link all previous editions with different (albeit similar) titles into one cycle. The edition is registered in the NAS of Ukraine as both printed and electronic publication with respective ISBNs for the entire series and the current fifth issue.

Prof. Arthur Looss (1861-1923) was a prolific German parasitologist, who, among other things, authored descriptions of 22 new species of nematodes and 115 new species of trematodes. After his death, his collection (including type material) was split between several institutions: Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History in Washington (USA), Natural History Museum in Berlin and the Natural History Museum in Leipzig (Germany), Gothenburg Museum of Natural History and Swedish Museum of Natural History (Sweden). Here we revise all type specimens of nematodes from the A. Looss collection that are currently preserved in the Swedish Museum of Natural History (Strongylus subtilis, Sclerostomum edentatum, S. vulgare, Cyathostomum labratum, C. coronatum, C. bicoronatum, C. calicatum, C. alveatum, C. catinatum, C. nassatum, C. radiatum, C. elongatum, C. auriculatum, Triodontus minor, T. serratus, C. labiatum and Uncinaria polaris), designate and describe lectotypes wherever deemed necessary and provide catalogue access numbers to all type materials. We also revise all notes and drawings associated with new species that A. Looss described and provide previously unpublished pencilled sketches and ink print-ready drawings of some of these species (Strongylus subtilis, Cyathostomum poculatum, C. radiatum, C. elongatum, C. calicatum, C. auriculatum, Triodontus serratus, Trichostrongylus vitrinus and possibly Necator africanus).

Richard Peter Vari 1949–2016

Ensuring that all global scientific collections become accessible online is a challenge. The Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF) maintains a Global Registry of Scientific Collections (GRSciColl) but as of May 2023, 58% of the collections included in the registry were from institutions based in Europe or North America. This shows a low representation of organizations from other regions. GBIF is addressing the bias with the help of its participant network and regional support teams. The GBIF participant network is actively encouraging institutions in its regions to register and describe their collection data through GBIF and GRSciColl. To complement this effort, the regional support teams based in Africa, Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean, and Europe are engaged in mobilizing new collections and updating existing ones (Fig. 1). In addition, a community of editors review changes proposed via a user suggestion system and keeps the entries in GRSciColl updated. The work of the regional support teams involves reviewing institutional web pages or other available online sources to update GRSciColl entries. In cases where the data are not accessible on the web, contacts from the institutions are invited to suggest changes to their GRSciColl pages. As a next step, institutions are contacted to inquire about their interest and plan for sharing open access data. If the response is positive, technical support is offered to help the institutions mobilize and publish the collection data through GBIF. The regional support teams have contacted a number of institutions and several institutions have shown interest in publishing collections on GBIF. Some organizations have already started digitizing and publishing their collection(s). With the training and technical support from the regional support teams, the following institutions have started to share data on GBIF: Instituto de Biodiversidad de Venezuela - INBIO has published data on 23,414 herbarium specimens. Natural History Museum, Tribhuvan University, Nepal has started digitizing its collections and has published eight datasets constituting 1,776 specimens. National Museum of Natural History at the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences has started digitizing 31 out of its 32 collections, of which they have published two herbarium collections represented as two datasets consisting of over 6,357 specimens. Instituto de Biodiversidad de Venezuela - INBIO has published data on 23,414 herbarium specimens. Natural History Museum, Tribhuvan University, Nepal has started digitizing its collections and has published eight datasets constituting 1,776 specimens. National Museum of Natural History at the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences has started digitizing 31 out of its 32 collections, of which they have published two herbarium collections represented as two datasets consisting of over 6,357 specimens. This presentation will highlight the data mobilization activities of the institutions, the progress of the GBIF regional support teams (Fig. 2), and the opportunities and challenges experienced in the mobilization effort.

A 2020 external review of science at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History (NMNH) noted that increased investment in informatics was a key element for becoming a modern knowledge institution. This review charged NMNH with developing and implementing a comprehensive strategy for the future of the museum’s informatics program including reorganization, innovation, and new approaches to staffing to address urgent needs in data science and informatics capacity. After completing assessments of current capacity and needs and the role of NMNH informatics within the global biodiversity informatics landscape, the informatics task force found that robust community building, both internally and externally, would be critical to an expanded vision of informatics at NMNH. Approaches for local and global community strategies across an organization, like NMNH and its people, go hand in hand. Solidifying a strong foundation locally is often necessary for enabling robust, coordinated participation and resource sharing at the global level. Although the task force's primary focus has been internal community building to support the increasing need for local informatics capacity, much of that internal work is closely aligned with and often driven by external participation and networks. It is also clear that many organizations are contending with similar challenges, highlighting the importance of sharing strategies and lessons learned through peer-to-peer discussions and knowledge sharing. Based on the results of the task force’s surveys, interviews and research, the new NMNH model will be anchored on the development of a community of practice. This model extends knowledge and strengthens communication and coordination with departments, programs, and collaborators both within the Smithsonian and globally. It focuses on expanding capacity through improved knowledge sharing, cross training and more strategic application of resources and tasking, hopefully resulting in a robust, innovative environment. Here we open discussions on the importance of community for increasing capacity in support of the expanding natural history informatics landscape and strategies for the future at many levels. We highlight findings from efforts of the NMNH task force to explore what successful, supported informatics capacity looks like and initial proposed plans for revitalizing the NMNH informatics program.

TAXONVolume 53, Issue 4 p. 899-903 Forum on Biogeography: IntroductionsFree Access Historical biogeography, the natural science Lynne R. Parenti, Lynne R. Parenti parenti@si.edu Division of Fishes, Department of Zoology, Smithsonian Institution, National Museum of Natural History, P.O. Box 37012, D.C. 20013 Rm. WG-12, MRC 159, Washington, U.S ASearch for more papers by this authorChristopher J. Humphries, Christopher J. Humphries cjh@nhm.ac.uk Department of Botany, The Natural History Museum, Cromwell Road, London, SW7 5 BD U.KSearch for more papers by this author Lynne R. Parenti, Lynne R. Parenti parenti@si.edu Division of Fishes, Department of Zoology, Smithsonian Institution, National Museum of Natural History, P.O. Box 37012, D.C. 20013 Rm. WG-12, MRC 159, Washington, U.S ASearch for more papers by this authorChristopher J. Humphries, Christopher J. Humphries cjh@nhm.ac.uk Department of Botany, The Natural History Museum, Cromwell Road, London, SW7 5 BD U.KSearch for more papers by this author First published: 01 November 2004 https://doi.org/10.2307/4135556Citations: 7AboutPDF ToolsRequest permissionExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL Share a linkShare onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditWechat Literature Cited Brundin, L. 1966. Transantarctic relationships and their significance as evidenced by midges. Kungl. Svenska Vetenskapsacad. Handl. (ser. 4) 11: 1– 172. Craw, R. C., Grehan, J. R. & Heads, M. J. 1999. Panbiogeography: Tracking the History of Life. Oxford Univ. Press, Oxford. Hallam, A. 1973. A Revolution in the Earth Sciences. From Continental Drift to Plate Tectonics. Clarendon Press, Oxford. Ladiges, P. Y., Humphries, C. J. & Martinelli, L. W. 1991. Austral Biogeography. CSIRO, Melbourne. Lomolino, M. V., Sax, D. F. & Brown, J. H. 2004. Foundations of Biogeography: Classic Papers with Commentaries. Univ. Chicago Press, Chicago. Morrone, J. J. & Carpenter, J. M. 1994. In search of a method for cladistic biogeography: an empirical comparison of Component Analysis, Brooks Parsimony Analysis, and Three-area statements. Cladistics 10: 99– 153. Williams, D. M. & Ebach, M. C. 2004. The reform of paleontology and the rise of biogeography—25 years after “ontogeny, phylogeny, paleonotology and the biogenetic law” ( Nelson, 1978). J. Biogeogr. 31: 685– 712. Citing Literature Volume53, Issue4November 2004Pages 899-903 ReferencesRelatedInformation

The type collection of Recent Mammals in the Division of Mammals, National Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Institution, contains 821 specimens bearing names of 810 species-group taxa of Didelphimorphia through Chiroptera, excluding Rodentia, as of June 2014. This catalog presents an annotated list of these holdings comprising 789 holotypes, 26 lectotypes, 11 syntypes (22 specimens), and 4 neotypes. Included are several specimens that should be in the collection but cannot be found or are now known to be in other collections. One hundred and twenty-eight of the names are new since the last type catalog covering these orders, Arthur J. Poole and Viola S. Schantz’s 1942 Catalog of the Type Specimens of Mammals in the United States National Museum, Incuding the Biological Surveys Collections (Bulletin of the United States National Museum, 178). Five specimens reported therein were subsequently sent to the National Museum’s Paleobiology Department collection and are mentioned only briefly in this work. They are Acratoenus? comes Miller, 1929, Paraconus serus Miller, 1929, Nesophontes hypomicrus Miller, 1929, Nesophontes paramicrus Miller, 1929, and Nesophontes zamicrus Miller, 1929. Orders and families are arranged systematically following D. E. Wilson and D. M. Reeder’s 2005 Mammal Species of the World: A Taxonomic and Geographic Reference,volume 1, third edition; within families, currently recognized genera are arranged alphabetically; within each currently recognized genus, species and subspecies accounts are arranged alphabetically by original published name. Information in each account includes original name and abbreviated citation thereto, current name if other than original, citation for first use of current name combination for the taxon (or new name combination if used herein for the first time), type designation, U.S. National Museum catalog number(s), preparation, age and sex, date of collection and collector, original collector number, type locality, and remarks as appropriate. Digital photographs of each specimen will serve as a condition report and will be attached to each electronic specimen record.

John Edwards Holbrook published North American Herpetology in 11 volumes from 18361842, authoring the first accounts of numerous amphibians and reptiles from the eastern and central United States, including 32 salamanders (Urodela). We reviewed these and located 51 extant salamander specimens from Holbrook in the Academy of Natural Sciences (Philadelphia), Museum of Comparative Zoology (Cambridge), and Musum national dHistoire naturelle (Paris), six of which are types. We identified four other specimens figured by Holbrook in the MNHN and National Museum of Natural History (Washington), all of which are types from descriptions by other authors. We designate lectotypes for S. porpyhritica Green, 1827 (USNM 3840; reversing neotype MCZ A-35778), Salamandra gutto-lineata Holbrook, 1838a (ANSP 716), S. auriculata Holbrook, 1838b (MNHN-RA 0.4675), S. maculo-quadrata Holbrook, 1840 (ANSP 821), S. granulata De Kay in Holbrook, 1842e (USNM 3981), S. quadridigitata Holbrook, 1842e (ANSP 490; reversing neotype UF 178833), and Plethodon variolosum Dumril, Bibron, and Dumril, 1854 (MNHN-RA 0.4666). Allocation of S. auriculata Holbrook, 1838b, S. Haldemani Holbrook, 1840, and P. variolosum Dumril, Bibron, and Dumril, 1854 is still ambiguous. We consider S. maculo-quadrata Holbrook, 1840 to be a junior subjective synonym of S. fusca Green, 1818; no valid name has ever been applied to Black-bellied Salamanders (Desmognathus sp. quadramaculatus) at the species level, and up to five candidate species require new names. Additional discoveries of data and specimens pertaining to Holbrooks names may remain to be made among his surviving papers and collections.

Resolution of Respect: Paul Risser, 1939–2014

The purpose of this study was to provide a master plan for the establishment of a Korean National Museum of Natural History. The origin and development of the natural history and the natural history museum were surveyed by visiting not only Korean natural history museums but also foreign ones from 1987 to 2009. Based on the obtained information, the qualitative and quantitative status of Korean natural history museums was comparatively analyzed in terms of globalization. Results indicated that Korean natural history museums ranked more than 100th in the world, and the research, management, and publications were situated in a rudimentary stage. Particularly, the number of researchers within the area was too small, and the research environment was poor in its function and resources. In addition, the specialists on exhibition and education of the museums were too few to publish the research products and academic journal articles. For that matter, a strategy as the research-specimen management-publication-exhibition-education functions should be in place to operate before the construction of National Museum of Natural History begins.

The various forms of cooperation between the National Museum of Natural History in Sofia and the Regional Museum of Natural History in Plovdiv are presented in the various areas of museum work (creation and curation of museum collections, exhibitions, scientific popularization, scientific research activities) from the establishment of the Regional Museum of Natural History in Plovdiv (1955) to 2025. The importance of this museum in the development and education of ecologically literate and nature conservation-educated citizens of modern Bulgarian society is highlighted.

This article is dedicated to the distinguished Ukrainian scientist Mykola Vasylovych Sharleman (1887–1970), who worked as a research associate at the Zoological Museum of the All-Ukrainian Academy of Sciences from 1921 to 1934 and held managerial positions at this institution in 1934(33)–1937 and 1941–1943. The long-standing scientific contributions of M. V. Sharleman provided the foundation for a collection that covers various regions of Ukraine and offers a valuable resource for analysing changes in the species composition and distribution of birds across Ukraine over the past century. A key milestone in this study was the discovery of the First Inventory Book of the collection from 1919, along with historical journals revised approximately in 1948–1949 that served as the collection’s catalogue. These unique documents proved to be vital in researching the history of acquisitions for the collections of the National Museum of Natural History of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine. Between 1907 and 1939, as well as in 1943, M. V. Sharleman donated 538 bird skins to the museum, representing 130 species of 13 orders. The most abundant specimens represented the species Calidris alpina (51 specimens), Phylomachus pugnax (28), Motacilla flava (26), and Dendrocopos major (19). Additionally, rare bird species listed in the Red Book of Ukraine were also present in the collection, such as Asio flammeus (2), Anarhynchus alexandrinus (1), Charadrius hiaticula (8), Columba oenas (1), Dendrocopos leucotos (4), Falco naumanni (2), Glareola nordmanni (2), Haematopus ostralegus (1), Lanius excubitor (2), Limosa limosa (2), Milvus migrans (1), Monticola saxatilis (1), Numenius arquata (2), Recurvirostra avosetta (2), and Sternula albifrons (3). The primary objective of this work is to study and promote the unique ornithological collection of the National Museum of Natural History (NMNH), which is the largest in Ukraine, encompassing over 40 000 specimens of 950 bird species. In addition to the scientific collection, which comprises bird skins (36 528 storage units) and egg clutches (2 998 units), there is also an impressive exhibition consisting of 1449 units. With its broad scale and scientific importance, this assemblage serves as a unique resource for biodiversity research. The ornithological collection holds not only scientific and cultural significance but also stands as a testament of dedication to the scientists whose meticulous work ensured its formation.