ZMH Crustacea collection

The Crustacea Collection at the Museum of Nature, Hamburg, represents the most extensive collection of crustaceans in Germany and one of the most important collections of its kind in the World. Currently, it comprises more than 850,000 specimens representing approximately 7,200 species, arranged in 2,100 genera and 350 families. Approximately 90% of the species in the collection are from marine habitats—the Southern Ocean is particularly well represented—but also includes material from freshwater and terrestrial habitats. To date, the collection comprises more than 70,000 catalog numbers of material collected worldwide. The taxonomic scope of the collection encompasses material from all classes within the Crustacea Brünnich, 1772, except the Cephalocarida Sanders, 1955. Particularly well represented are the Malacostraca Latreille, 1802, especially the orders Amphipoda Latreille, 1816 (about 250,000 specimens) and the marine Isopoda Latreille, 1816 (ca. 170,000). The order Decapoda Latreille, 1802 is also present, with about 37,000 individuals. Regarding the type material, the Crustacea collection contains more than 4,000 lots, including holotypes, allotypes, paratypes, neotypes, syntypes, paralectotypes, and unspecific types. The largest type collection is the Ostracoda, with types of 739 species, followed by the Isopoda (369), the Amphipoda (239), and the Cumacea (139). In recent years, digitization, data validation, and data homogenization have been among the primary tasks not only in the Crustacea but in all zoological collections of the Museum of Nature. This is an ongoing process that will continue to be extended and made publicly available through the LIB digital catalog (https://collections.leibniz-lib.de) and the Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF). The Crustacea collection continues to grow through donations and new field collections around the world.