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A large part of the Illinois Natural History Fish Collection
comes from specimens collected from 1880 to 1905 for S.A. Forbes
and R.E. Richardson's "The Fishes of Illinois" published
in 1908 and from specimens collected from 1950 to 1978 for P.W.
Smith's "The Fishes of Illinois" published in 1979.
Thousands of specimens have been added from other areas of North
and South America in the past few decades. The collection contains
representatives from 47 of the 50 states and many countries
including: Angola, Antigua, Bolivia, Brazil, Canada, Colombia,
Costa Rica, England, Guyana, Indonesia, Lebanon, Mexico, Pakistan,
Panama, Paraguay, Peru, Puerto Rico, Romania, Russia, Thailand,
Trinidad Venezuela, and Yugoslavia. The geographic scope of
the collection is about 51% from Illinois, 30% from elsewhere
in North America, 18% from South America, and 1% from the rest
of the world, including Antarctica.
The collection contains over 841,000 catalogued specimens,
which makes it about the 15th largest collection of preserved
fishes, and the 6th largest collection of Neotropical fishes
in North America. Represented are about 170 families and over
2,400 species. The value of the collection is greatly enhanced
by the large number of old specimens, many of which were collected
in the late 1800's from areas where they no longer occur. The
type collection contains 1220 specimens representing 93 nominal
species. Name-bearing type material consists of 31 holotypes
(37 species), 5 lectotypes, and 7 series of
syntypes (39 specimens). Additional type material includes paratypes
of 125 nominal species (1,198 specimens).
Since 1970, the Illinois Natural History Survey Fish Collection has loaned, gifted, or exchanged almost 50,000 specimens.
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