Natural history collections provide one of our few remaining links to extinct species and therefore provide an invaluable resource to conservation biologists, geneticists, systematists, ecologists, and other flavors of evolutionary biologists. Ecological information collected with specimens can provide important historical data regarding evolution at the community and population levels and results of anthropogenic changes in species' environments. Finally, systematic hypotheses developed from specimen-based research may help validate or explain the results of ecological studies.
The mammal collection of the Natural History Museum, University of Kansas, is one of the largest collections in North America, and the second largest university collection. The collection now contains over 158,000 cataloged specimens. The collection is world-wide in scope, with areas of greatest strength from the New World. There are 130 type specimens in our collection at present. There is broad taxonomic coverage, including important holdings of Central and South American marsupials, insectivores, bats, rodents, and Holarctic shrews, squirrels, dipodids, arvicolids, and lagomorphs.
Loans are made to institutions for the purposes of scientific research. Loans are for the use of bona fide research scientists who generally are university faculty, museum curators, or graduate students. We will generally make international loans when warranted. The dissection of alcoholic specimens for research may be permitted.
We routinely provide information and identification services for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the Kansas Department of Wildlife and Parks, Kansas Natural Heritage Program (and those in other states), the U.S. Customs Service, and foreign researchers/agencies.
Our database is fully operational, and we can generate lists of specimens sorted on any data field or in the order of occurrence in the collection. Our data base conforms to national standards. The database is an effective management tool; we have used it to correct many old curatorial problems and we can answer complicated queries easily. We are frequently called upon to provide advice, and also serve as a repository for research-generated specimens. Our library resources are also used by other mammalogists in the region, and we assist mammalogists in developing countries at no cost to them.
For more information on the mammal collection, follow one of these links:
Collection management protocol
Destructive sampling policy
Data management (including a link to the data
protocols of the American Society of Mammalogists)
A brief history of the Mammal Division
Staff and students in the Mammal Division
If you have questions, please post them to the address at the bottom of this page.
Photographs copyright © 1995, Barbara L. Clauson