Illinois Natural History Survey
Fish Collection
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, 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.

The collection contains approximately 800,000 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 140 families and over 1,600 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 collection contains primary types of 25 species and subspecies. The type collection contains 999 specimens representing 72 nominal species. Name-bearing type material consists of 26 holotypes (24 species and two subspecies), 5 lectotypes, and 5 series of syntypes (39 specimens). Additional type material includes paratypes of 66 nominal species (915 specimens) and 2 subspecies (14 specimens).

Fishes in Illinois

Selected Links

INHS Scientific Collections
Center for Biodiversity
Illinois Natural History Survey

 

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Last Modified 6/18/2002 cam