Anemone Haliplanella lineata © Photo: R Manuel |
Oceans Gallery, Auckland Museum |
The Auckland Museum Marine Collection consists of a wide range of specimens from New Zealand coastal and oceanic waters.
The collection includes a large number of sea-shore and inter-tidal species collected from beaches, foreshores and estuaries.
Although the collection holds specimens from the tropical Pacific through to the Sub Antarctic islands, it concentrates on species from northern New Zealand.
As well as looking after the second-largest collection of New Zealand marine molluscs, the Marine Department cares for a large and significant collection of land snails from New Zealand and the tropical Pacific. It also houses a large number of fossil specimens.
In total there are more than 750,000 specimens in the collection, and its strengths are:
- New Zealand marine and land molluscs (bivalves and snails)
- Fish (one of two major research collections in the country)
- Pacific molluscs (fresh-water, marine and land snails)
- Crustacea (including crayfish, crabs, amphipods and isopods).
Imaging Type Specimens
Important components of our collections are the "type specimens". When a new species is described the researcher selects a series of specimens which show all the characters that make up that species. One of these specimens becomes the primary type or holotype and the specimen which is wholly (holo) typical of the species. It “carries” the new name with it. Although not primary types, the other specimens, or paratypes, remain part of the type series and are kept in case the primary type is lost or damaged.
The Marine Department has been working towards electronically cataloguing all of its specimens, and progressively making these available as part of Natural History Collections Online later this year. If in the meantime you need type specimen or other collection information please contact us at info@aucklandmuseum.com or ring us on +64 9 309 0443.
Read more about the project and view images » Back to Natural Science home |
