Colombian Museum of Natural Marine History (MHNMC) - South America

Colombian Museum of Natural Marine History (MHNMC) of the Coastal and Marine Research Institute - INVEMAR - is the main collection of marine species of Colombia. Through the MHNMC, INVEMAR has developed the Marine Biodiversity Information System (SIBM for its initials in Spanish) in order to organize its collections and to analyze biodiversity information. The core of this system organizes records of the lots held in the MHNMC with their collection data as well as the information about their placement within the collection. The core also includes a comprehensive arrangement (including images) of the taxonomic groups represented in the collection, including additional information about their systematic and taxonomy from a variety of scientific sources. Currently, the collection holds about 32,000 catalogued lots, mainly fishes, echinoderms, crustaceans, molluscs, polychaetes and corals, mostly collected from the Caribbean, as well as about 2,000 lots from the Colombian northern Pacific continental shelf, and donations from universities and national and international museums. The marine collection is now considered one of the largest and best organized in the southern Caribbean.