Center for Systematic Biology and Evolution

What do John James Audubon, Meriwether Lewis & William Clark, Thomas Jefferson, Thomas Say, Joseph Leidy, Ernest Hemingway and Captain James Cook have in common? Each was an explorer of the natural world who collected biological specimens that are now housed in the Academy of Natural Sciences.

Since its founding in 1812, researchers from the Academy have collected specimens from all points on the globe. These collections have grown over the last two centuries. Today, the Center for Systematic Biology and Evolution at the Academy cares for and studies over 17 million specimens of plants and animals, both extant and fossil. The collections are of national and international significance. Among these are the world's largest collection of Orthoptera (crickets & grasshoppers), the world's largest collection of diatoms (microscopic aquatic plants), the world's second largest collection of mollusks, and the worlds most comprehensive collection of Rotifera on microscope slides.

Collections are the raw material of systematics, the study of the relationships among organisms. Having the actual specimens of organisms provides objective, verifiable records of their identities, as well as where and when they lived. As libraries that document the past and present species of the world, they yield new opportunities for discoveries that were unanticipated by the scientists who collected them.

In addition to caring for and expanding the natural history collections, scientists at the Center for Systematic Biology and Evolution are conducting significant research into biodiversity, ecology, evolution, molecular systematics and paleontology.