Collections
The Biodiversity Lab Research Collections are arranged as:
Dry Collections: primarily pinned insect specimens
Wet Collections: primarily arachnids (spiders, scorpions, etc.) and herpetofauna (amphibians and reptiles) in 70% ethanol
Frozen Tissue Collections: tissue of all the above animal groups preserved in 100% molecular-grade ethanol, RNAlater and Trizol, maintained at -80°C in deep freezers for genome and transcriptome sequencing
Specimen details such as species names and other taxonomic information, geo-referenced collection localities, dates, genitalia dissections, genetic sequences, etc., are being catalogued in a central, searcheable, electronic database. We have also been actively engaged in data repatriation from historical specimen collections largely from British, European and North American museums. This is currently available upon request, and it will be made available on the Collections website in due course.