Established in 1894, The Field Museum's fish collection now contains nearly 1.7 million specimens in 125,000 lots. The scope of the collection is worldwide. Some 300 nominal families and more than 7,000 nominal species are represented, including three well-preserved specimens of the Coelacanth. The Division of Fishes serves the research needs of scientists and students on all continents, both through their visits to the division and through outgoing loans. Continued scientific interest in the holdings of the fish collection stems not only from its historically important specimens and types, but also from the active incorporation of new material into the collection. Much of the growth of the collection was derived from the active field and collection programs of the curatorial staff. S. E. Meek (1897-1914) pioneered the study of the freshwater fishes of Mexico and Central America. L. P. Woods (1941-1978) amassed large and important collections of freshwater and marine fishes from North America, and the Atlantic, Indian, and Pacific Oceans. R. K. Johnson (1972-1986) obtained significant collections of open-ocean mesopelagic fishes, and shorefishes from Belize and Honduras amounting to 100,000 specimens. D. J. Stewart (1978-1985) made outstanding collections of freshwater fishes from Ecuador, Peru and Venezuela. The ichthyological collection at The Field Museum is an internationally recognized systematic resource, and is ranked among the largest, most diverse, and most important fish collections in the world. Its importance has been recognized by the Advisory Committee for the Development of a National Plan for Ichthyology of the American Society of Ichthyologists (Collette and Lachner, 1976). This committee and recent surveys (ASC Survey, 1988; MITRE report 1993) have ranked The Field Museum within the top ten most important international ichthyological resource centers in North America. The ranking is based not only upon the size of the holdings but also the geographic coverage of the collection and the extensive type collection. The specimens comprise approximately 125,000 lots of which 104,000 catalog numbers are assigned. (The number of database entries has been reduced to 83,231 by consolidating single lots that were given multiple catalog numbers). The large backlog of uncatalogued fishes is largely a function of the extensive collecting efforts of previous curators (e.g., R. K. Johnson in Central America, D. J. Stewart in South America, L. Woods in the Indian Ocean), acquisition of the Northern Illinois University Collection, and the Chicago Sanitary District fish survey. Much of the backlog is identified to family, sorted to genus, and requires further identifications. Systematic Coverage-More than 9,000 species in 320 families are estimated to be represented in the collection (including the backlog of uncatalogued fishes). Using the estimates provided by Nelson (1984), the ichthyology collection of The Field Museum has representatives of 41% of the estimated living species of fishes and 72% of the families. This systematic breadth engenders ecological and environmental diversities within the collection from the full range of freshwater habitats, to estuarine, to shallow-marine nearshore, to offshore and to deep sea environments. Geographic Coverage-The collection contains specimens from all continents, many countries (ca. 48%), all oceans, most major seas, and many islands or island groups. The collections are divided almost equally between freshwater and marine holdings. Collections of premier importance include those from: the freshwater of Mexico, Central and South America; the western tropical Atlantic, especially from the Gulf of Mexico and western Caribbean; and fresh and nearshore marine waters of North America. There are also important, diverse holdings of fishes from East Asia, Southeast Asia, and the Indian and Pacific Ocean basins. Field Museum ichthyological resources from other regions (e.g., Iraq, Poland, Lebanon, China) are generally not well represented in other United States institutions. Type Specimens-The collection is especially rich in type specimens. Holdings of type materials (850 primary types, 750 secondary types) place The Field Museum among the five most important type depositories in North America. There are at least 1,410 nominal species represented by primary types. At present, estimates are not available for the total number of primary and secondary types, because the type catalogs of Gray (1947) and Ibarra and Stewart (1987) do not provide counts of the secondary types. The type holdings comprise taxa from five continents and the Atlantic, Pacific and Indian Oceans. The type collection derives from the following sources: exploratory fieldwork and systematic research of curators and associates, purchase of the Carnegie Museum fish collection in 1952; and receipt of gifts or exchanges from colleagues throughout the world. Acquisition of the Carnegie Museum collection, with about 500 taxa represented from primary types (Henn, 1928) more than doubled the type collection of fishes in The Field Museum (Ibarra and Stewart, 1987). Most of the taxa represented by Field Museum types were described after 1900, with the largest percentage described between 1905 and 1930 (see Ibarra and Stewart, 1987, Fig. 1). The majority from that time were described by S. E. Meek (Field Museum), S. F. Hildebrand (United States National Museum), C. H. Eigenmann (Indiana University), D. S. Jordan (Stanford University), C. L. Hubbs (Field Museum, University of Michigan), C. H. Gilbert (Stanford University), J. D. Haseman (Carnegie Museum) and their associates. Historically Significant Materials-In addition to the type collection, The Field Museum maintains much other material of historic value. These collections include pre-1930 materials from areas that have or are now undergoing significant environmental changes (e.g., United States, Mexico, North Borneo, Mexico, Central and South America, etc.). Much of this material is documented in the now classic works of Meek, Meek and Hildebrand, and Eigenmann and his students, among others. Other material of historic importance includes the turn of the century collections from the United States and Mexico by A. J. Woolman, and collections from Japan, Taiwan, Korea and China by Jordan and colleagues, as well as the numerous purchases by A. Owston. Skeletal Material-The skeletal collection comprises more than 3,600 skeletons from more than 210 families of fishes. Of these, approximately 1,200 are dry, articulated or disarticulated preparations from 147 families, and the remainder are cleared and stained specimens. Dry skeleton preparations are facilitated by the dermestid colonies maintained by the Museum. Special Collections-There are a number of special collections (e.g. freshwater fishes from Borneo, Iran, Lebanon) that are unique or unusual among United States holdings. The collections also contain extensive holdings of large fishes. The collection has 135 specimen tanks that hold 1,163 large specimens from 114 families. However, two collection areas, neotropical freshwater and marine fishes, warrant special mention because our holdings are especially important and have been growing in size and value. Marine Fishes of the Western Caribbean and Indo-Pacific-Two major marine collections are those of A. Owston in the Japanese Archipelago during the early 1900s and L. P. Woods in the Pacific and Indian Oceans in the 1960s. The Owston collection contains over 1,100 lots, and the Woods collections represent over 1,200 catalogued lots and an additional estimated 800 lots of backlog material. More recently, R. K. Johnson and D. W. Greenfield have been collaborating on an intensive faunistic, systematic, ecologic, and zoogeographic study of western Caribbean shorefishes. They have specialized in Belize and Honduras, bringing to The Field Museum more than 100,000 specimens comprising ca. 10,000 lots during the decade 1970-1980. In the last four years M. Westneat has added approximately 200 lots (>2,000 specimens) of fishes from the Eastern coast of the United States, approximately 800 lots (>10,000 specimens) of fishes from the Northern Great Barrier Reef of Australia, and approximately 200 skeletal specimens, 200 lots from Thailand, 200 lots from Philippines. Neotropical Freshwater Fishes-Beginning with the work of S. E. Meek in Mexico and Central America, the ichthyological collection has maintained important and still growing collections of neotropical freshwater fishes. In the last fifteen years, D. W. Greenfield, J. Thomerson and their collaborators have placed in The Field Museum more than 50,000 specimens comprising ca. 2,000 lots and 107 species from 150 different localities within Belize. The Carnegie Museum collection, accessioned in 1951, included the substantial collections made by C. H. Eigenmann and his associates in South America earlier this century. D. J. Stewart (Assistant Curator of Fishes, 1978-1985) brought in abundant material from collecting trips to Venezuela (1979), Peru (1980) and Ecuador (1981, 1983). His collections in the Rio Napo basin of Ecuador have brought to The Field Museum approximately 83,200 specimens (not including the 41,600 specimens returned to Ecuador) in approximately 4,250 lots representing more than 430 species. The Napo collection containing samples from more than 200 different localities between 200m and 2500m elevations is among the finest collections ever made for a neotropical river basin of its size. B. Chernoff has continued to increase the neotropical freshwater collection. In the past five years, Chernoff's collections from Peru and Venezuela contain approximately 50,000 specimens in over 1,900 lots, with more than 100 species new to the collection. Other Zoology Collections: Amphibians and Reptiles | Birds | Fishes | Insects | Invertebrates | Mammals