Invertebrate Zoology Collections at the Museum of Biological Diversity (OSUM)

We maintain several important natural history collections of invertebrates: Bivalve Mollusks, Gastropods (and other non-bivalve mollusks), Crustaceans, and General Invertebrates. Though we have specimens collected as early as the 1810s, the collections formally began in the 1890s as part of the "O.S.U. Museum of Zoology".

The collections were then managed by the Ohio Historical Society (OHS) which operated on OSU's campus as "The Ohio State Museum" from about 1925 to the 1960s. In 1970, the University became the primary custodian of all the zoological collections aside from a small synoptic set of Ohio material retained by OHS. The invertebrate collections were historically curated independently as 3 separate Divisions of the museum, but have been been managed as one Invertebrate Zoology Division of the Museum of Biological Diversity since 2024.