MLZ Fish Collection (Arctos)

The Vantuna Research Group’s (VRG) fish collection, now integrated into the Moore Laboratory of Zoology collection, is located at Occidental College in Los Angeles, California. The fish collection totals nearly 600,000 specimens and includes whole organisms (>20,000), larvae (>550,000), tissue samples (6,236), otoliths (19,458), gonads (676), and vertebrae (126). The collection was established by Dr. John S. Stephens in 1960. Stephens and his mentee, Dr. Dan Pondella, the current VRG Director, worked together on rocky-reef fishes of the eastern Pacific. Stephens described the family of Chaenopsidae and Pondella specialized in phylogenetic systematics of bass and groupers. The vast majority of the collection’s specimens are from the Southern California Bight and together encompass the full spatial extent of the southern California rocky reef ecosystem. Taxonomic strengths of the collection, excluding larvae specimens, include Sciaenidae (13,765), Atherinopsidae (3,199), Sebastidae (1,740), Embiotocidae (1,628), and Serranidae (837). Most of the larvae specimens were collected as part of an ongoing study and represent over 45 years of monthly collections—this is one of the largest and longest time-series collections of nearshore fish larvae in the region. Taxonomic strengths of this larvae collection include Gobiidae (166,507), Blenniidae (130,666), Pomacentridae (83,558), and Labrisomidae (52,767).