Size and housing

The gastropod collection contains approximately 63,000 lots (>1 million specimens). It is richest in North American freshwater snails, many preserved in alcohol (~177,000 specimens), making them suitable for modern genetic work. Many of these populations no longer exist.

In addition to the rich freshwater snail material, the collection also has large holdings of 1) the endangered Florida tree snail, Liguus fasciatus, 2) Hawaiian Achatinella, many extinct, and 3) peanut snails, Cerion sp., including large lots from the Maynard collection.

One of the top priorities in the next few years is the computerization of the collection. Data for the bivalve collection have been transfered to the database program FileMaker Pro, and a similar database has been written for the gastropods.