Databases

The University of Florida Herbarium Collections Catalog is a searchable database of the label data for ca. 21,000 of the ca. 400,000 herbarium specimens on file in the vascular plant and bryophyte and lichen collections. The catalog is cross-linked with the University of Florida Herbarium Type Specimens Catalog where type details are provided. High-resolution digital images are available for selected specimens including certain type specimens and poisonous plants.

Contact: Kent Perkins, Herbarium Collections Manager.

We seek and encourage input from Users about the UF Herbarium databases and request that you send us any comments and suggestions about errors or inconsistencies that might be determined during your use of this resource. We reserve the right to modify, or not to modify, the existing database in response to your comments.

The University of Florida Herbarium Type Specimens Catalog is a searchable database of vascular plant, bryophyte and lichen type specimen label data. High resolution digital images for many of the vascular plant holotypes, isotypes, lectotypes, neotypes and syntypes are linked in. Literature citations and special notes relevant to the included specimens are available.

The project is a collaborative effort of the Florida Museum of Natural History / University of Florida Herbarium, University of Florida Libraries Digital Library Center and the Florida Center for Library Automation. It is being coordinated with the Linking Florida's Natural Heritage endeavor.

Contact: Kent Perkins, Herbarium Collections Manager.

We seek and encourage input from Users about the UF Herbarium databases and request that you send us any comments and suggestions about errors or inconsistencies that might be determined during your use of this resource. We reserve the right to modify, or not to modify, the existing database in response to your comments.

A major component in the Florida Museum's North American Indian ethnographic collection came to the University of Florida in 1964 when a donor purchased the Leigh Morgan Pearsall collection for the museum. With representative pieces from most of the major tribal cultures in North America, the Pearsall collection is especially rich in examples of North American Indian art made during the Reservation Period (1890-1920), a time of transition for American Indian cultures. The collection is an important resource for studying the origins of the North American Indian art market. The Pearsall database includes a selection of 500 objects, about 20% of the collection, from the United States and Canada, as well as a few Siberian artifacts from the Western Arctic.

Contact: Dr. Susan Milbrath, Curator of Latin American Art and Archaeology

We seek and encourage input from users about the databases and request that you send us any comments and suggestions about errors or inconsistencies that might be determined during your use of this resource. We reserve the right to modify, or not to modify, the existing database in response to your comments.

Artifacts of the Seminole and Miccosukee people include baskets, clothing, footwear, tools, cooking and food-processing implements, dolls, ball-game gear, musical instruments, and photographs. The majority of these items were collected systematically by John Goggin in the 1940s and 1950s, to be used as a research and teaching collection. Many of the other items have been donated by relatives of people who lived and worked among the Seminole and Miccosukee in the late 1800s and early 1900s.

Contact: Dr. William Marquardt, Curator of South Florida Archaeology and Ethnography and Director of the Randell Research Center.

We seek and encourage input from users about the databases and request that you send us any comments and suggestions about errors or inconsistencies that might be determined during your use of this resource. We reserve the right to modify, or not to modify, the existing database in response to your comments.

Before requesting more information, please consult our:

Data Request and Loans - Policies & Terms

We seek and encourage input from Users about the Herpetology database and request that you send us any comments and suggestions about errors or inconsistencies that might be determined during your use of this resource. We reserve the right to modify, or not to modify, the existing database in response to your comments.

Comments, inquiries, or requests for complete records, including specific locality information, should be addressed to Rob Robins.

We seek and encourage input from Users about the Ichthyology database and request that you send us any comments and suggestions about errors or inconsistencies that might be determined during your use of this resource. We reserve the right to modify, or not to modify, the existing database in response to your comments.

We encourage IP database user input. Comments and suggestions concerning errors and inconsistencies found during your searches should be sent to Roger Portell. However, we reserve the right to modify (or not) the existing database in response to your comments.

The Malacology Holotype List includes all of the primary types housed in the FLMNH Collection. In addition to these holotypes, the FLMNH Malacology Collection has numerous lots of paratypes, cotypes, syntypes and figured specimens. The list is arranged alphabetically by genus and then by species within each genus. Species and subspecies are listed in the genus in which they were originally described. The original citation and the current genus, if there has been a reassignment, are given in the Remarks Section of each entry. This database will be periodically updated as necessary. Support for the computerized curation of the Malacology Collection was provided by the University of Florida and the National Science Foundation.

Send comments or inquiries to: mala@flmnh.ufl.edu. We seek and encourage input from users about the Invertebrate Zoology/Malacology databases and request that you send us any comments and suggestions about
errors or inconsistencies that might be determined during your use of these resources. We reserve the right to modify, or not to modify, the existing databases in response to your comments.

Contact: Candace McCaffery, Mammals Collection Manager.

We seek and encourage input from Users about the Mammalogy database and request that you send us any comments and suggestions about errors or inconsistencies that might be determined during your use of this resource. We reserve the right to modify, or not to modify, the existing database in response to your comments.

We offer these data as-is, without guarantees of their accuracy in every respect. They are intended as an introduction to the collection.

For data in the fields "Age", and "Weight" through "Stom", inquire with a collection manager.

The "Sound Recording" field indicates whether a given species' voice is represented on our "Florida Bird Sounds" page.

This table does not include data for our large egg, nest, and animal sound collections. For information about these please ask collection manager Tom Webber.

Contact: Andy Kratter or Tom Webber, collection managers.

We seek and encourage input from users about the Ornithology database and request that you send us any comments and suggestions about errors or inconsistencies that might be determined during your use of these resources. We reserve the right to modify, or not to modify, the existing database in response to your comments.

The Florida Museum of Natural History Division of Vertebrate Paleontology houses three separately catalogued collections of fossil vertebrates: the museum's own collection (official acronym UF); the collection formerly housed by the Florida Geological Survey (UF/FGS); and the collection amassed by the late Pierce Brodkorb of the Department of Zoology at the University of Florida (UF/PB). A pull-down menu on the search web page gives you the option of searching all three collections simultaneously (the default condition) or searching each of the three collections individually.

We recommended use of the "wildcard" option when conducting searches that include the Epoch, Land Mammal Age, Nature of Specimen, or Site fields.

The Site field contains the name of the fossil-producing locality. The Site Key field contains an alphanumeric code that was originally used by our in-house database to relate our specimen and locality databases, but over time these codes have become equivalent to the locality numbers used by many paleontology collections and have appeared in some publications. A site key value of "OK1" was formerly used for specimens with no or relatively little locality data; the locality data (if any) for such specimens is stored in the remarks field of our in-house database and not available online. Questions regarding available data for such specimens should be directed to the vertebrate paleontology collections manager.

Those using the online specimen database for research purposes should be aware that some of our localities produce fossils of different geologic ages. For example, fossils collected from the spoil piles in a particular mine or from the bed of particular river may include a mixture of Miocene and Pleistocene specimens. Since 2001, we have consistently assigned different (although often related) Site Key codes for each age produced at each locality, but in prior years sometimes only a single code was used. This may produce specimens with incorrect data in their Epoch and Land Mammal Age fields, for example a Miocene-age Equus. The VP staff is correcting these problems as they are encountered, but some are expected to linger for years. Users of the online database are encouraged to report results that produce anomalous responses to the vertebrate paleontology collections manager.

We use the following conventions in the Nature of Specimen field to describe which part or parts of the skeleton are present:

• For mammals, the term "mandible" is used instead of "dentary" or "hemimandible" or "lower jaw;" in non-mammalian taxa, "dentary" is used if the specimen consists only of the dentary bone and "mandible" if bones such are the articular, angular, etc. are present along with the dentary.
• For mammalian teeth, the abbreviations I, C, P, and M are frequently used for incisor, canine, premolar, and molar, respectively. A numeral following one of these refers to a specific tooth, e.g., P3 is the third molar. A "D" before I, C, or P indicates a deciduous tooth.
• Multiple bones or elements are separated by semicolons. If there is field or anatomical evidence that these belonged to the same individual, the term "associated" will be at the end of the Nature of Specimen field. If this field contains a number enclosed within parentheses, that indicates the number of such specimens, e.g., "humerus, right; rib (12); vertebra, thoracic (6), associated" represents a partial skeleton of a single individual for which we recovered 12 ribs and 6 thoracic vertebrae.
• Incomplete specimens are indicated by the use of the term "partial" in the nature of specimen field, although this term is not used for specimens which are 80 per cent or more complete and not missing any significant portion. Specimens in the UF/FGS catalogue and those in the UF collection with catalogue numbers less than 30000 often do not use this convention and also often have scanty information describing the nature of the specimen.
• The inner ear bone of mammals is called the "petrosal" except for cetaceans, sirenians, and bats. Following standard convention, the inner ear bone of these mammals is called the "periotic."

University of Florida Main Collection

The UF main collection contains about 335,000 specimens assigned to over 220,000 unique catalogue numbers. This collection contains over 150 holotypes and 250 other type specimens. The UF collection has experienced rapid, sometimes explosive, growth since the 1950s and now ranks in the top five nationally in terms of total catalogued specimens. Consistent with our museum's mission as the official repository for Florida's natural history specimens, about 90 per cent of this collection comes from about 1,000 separate localities throughout Florida. A particular strength of the UF collection is the extraordinary array of land-animals from the past 25 million years in Florida, forming the best record documenting the evolution of ancient vertebrate life in eastern North America over this interval. Other major strengths of the UF collection include extensive holdings from Haiti, the Dominican Republic, the Cayman Islands, Jamaica, and other Caribbean islands, fossils from Central and South America (especially Bolivia and Honduras), and specimens from the late Eocene to Oligocene "Badlands" of western Nebraska. On-going field work begun by our new curator Jonathan Bloch in 2004 will over time produce a significant collection from the Paleogene basins of Wyoming.

Florida Geological Survey Collection

The Florida Geological Survey fossil vertebrate collection (FGS) was started during the 1910s and was originally housed in Tallahassee. Under the direction of E. H. Sellards, Herman Gunter, and S. J. Olsen, the FGS collection was the primary source of fossil vertebrate descriptions from Florida until the early 1960s. World-renown paleontologists such as George G. Simpson, Edwin H. Colbert, and Henry F. Osborn wrote scientific papers about specimens in the FGS collection in addition to Sellards and Olsen. In 1976 the entire FGS fossil vertebrate collection was transferred to the Florida Museum of Natural History with support from a National Science Foundation grant. The UF/FGS collection is composed of about 22,000 specimens assigned to about 10,000 catalogue numbers, and almost all of them were collected in Florida. The majority of specimens in the UF/FGS collection are mammals, followed by reptiles, birds, and a relatively small number of amphibians and fish. Although there are some sites that are unique to the UF/FGS collection, many of the sites overlap with holdings in the main UF and UF/PB collections. The major strengths of the UF/FGS collection are historically important samples from the early Miocene Thomas Farm locality, the middle Miocene and early Pliocene deposits of the Bone Valley Region, Polk County, and from the late Pleistocene Vero locality, Indian River County. Researchers using the UF/FGS database should be aware that when the catalogue data for the FGS collection was first transferred from the original file cards to a computerized database in the late 1980s, relatively little effort was made to correct or improve entries. The nature of specimen was not indicated on many of the cards, locality information was sometimes vague, and many employed taxonomic names that are no longer in use. While some corrections have subsequently been made to this database, limitations of time and resources have prevented an exhaustive clean-up. Also, when Sellards left Florida for Texas in the 1920s, he transferred some, but not all, of the holotypes in the FGS collection that he had named to the USNM collection, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C.

Pierce Brodkorb Collection

The Pierce Brodkorb Collection (UF/PB) was amassed by Professor Brodkorb of the University of Florida over his long and renown career as one of the world's foremost experts on fossil birds. His heirs donated his extensive collections of modern bird skeletons and fossil birds to the Florida Museum of Natural History in 1992. The modern skeletons are housed by the museum's Ornithology collection. Brodkorb's fossil bird collection was curated and computer catalogued with support from the National Science Foundation. The UF/PB collection is composed of about 8,500 catalogued specimens and includes 42 holotypes. About 85 per cent of the UF/PB specimens were collected in Florida, and range in age from early Miocene to latest Pleistocene. Other large holdings are Pleistocene birds from Bermuda and the Bahamas.

Contact: Richard C. Hulbert, Vertebrate Paleontology database collection manager.

We seek and encourage input from Users about the VP databases and request that you send us any comments and suggestions about errors or inconsistencies that might be determined during your use of this resource. We reserve the right to modify, or not to modify, the existing database in response to your comments.

The Zooarchaeology Comparative Collection is one of four collections within the Environmental Archaeology program:

The Zooarchaeology Comparative Collection contains skeletons of vertebrates and exoskeletons of mollusks and crustaceans and their associated data. Since the focus of our zooarchaeological research is the southeastern United States, the West Indies, the circum-Caribbean area, and northwestern South America, the comparative collection is composed of specimens from these regions with particular emphasis on those from the southeastern United States and the West Indies. These specimens are used in a comparative way to identify the fragmentary remains from archaeological sites. The data are also used to estimate size, age, and season of death of animals recovered from archaeological contexts. Some of the specimens are accompanied by various standard measurements; others have only basic collection information. This information is made available for research purposes. We welcome any suggestions or corrections for improving this database. We would also like to know how it has been put to use.

Scholars who would like to use this collection for research should contact either Dr. Kitty Emery or Irv Quitmyer.

In addition to the Zooarchaeology Comparative Collection the FLMNH houses three collections catalogued in the Environmental Archaeology Program. This program began with the Zooarchaeology Collection and with the primary research tool for all zooarchaeological research, the Zooarchaeology Comparative Collection, both initiated in 1961. These were followed by the Archaeobotanical Collection started in 1986 by Lee Newsom and monitored today by Donna Ruhl, and the Archaeological Soils Collection started in 1991 by Sylvia Scudder. The addition of these last two collections transformed the former zooarchaeology program into its present broader scope, the Environmental Archaeology Program. Computerization of the data integral to these collections is an important management and research tool. As soon as this is completed these databases will be included on the Internet. At the present time the collection databases that you will find on the Internet are for the Zooarchaeology Comparative Collection.

Contact: Dr. Kitty Emery or Irv Quitmyer.

We seek and encourage input from users about the Zooarchaeology Comparative Databases and request that you send us any comments and suggestions about errors or inconsistencies that might be determined during your use of this resource. We reserve the right to modify, or not to modify, the existing database in response to your comments.