| Summary of the history of the fish division
The Museum of Zoology was first officially recognized in 1895. It actually got its start in
1874 when Professor Albert H. Tuttle, the first zoologist at the Ohio State University began to
collect specimens for teaching. In 1891 Professor David S. Kellicot, Department of Zoology and
Entomology, began to organize and catalog the specimens.
The Ohio State University Biological Station was established at Cedar Point in 1898.
Collections made along the south shore of Lake Erie over a number of years were included in the
Zoology Deparment collections which were kept in the attic of the B&Z building. Professor
James Stewart Hine had charge of the material until 1920. In 1921 Professor Hine placed Milton
B. Trautman in charge of the collections which were moved to the Ohio State Historical Society
about 1925. Between 1925 and 1930 Trautman cataloged this material along with specimens he
collected throughout the state. The period between 1930 - 1935 saw collections supported in
part by the Ohio Department of Conservation (now ODNR) with Trautman and E.L. Wickliff of the
Department making statewide collections. This work resulted in the following
publications:Osburn, R.C., E.L. Wickliff and M.B. Trautman. 1930. A revised list of the fishes of
Ohio, and Wickliff and Trautman. 1934. List of the fishes of Ohio.
Between 1939 and 1955 Milton and Mary Trautman collected and cataloged fishes at the
research facility on South Bass Island. These came from Lake Erie region and elsewhere in the
state. In 1955 these collections were moved to Columbus and combined with those in the Ohio
State Museum. In 1957 Trautman's book The Fishes of Ohio, a comprehensive treatment of the
state fauna summarizing all previous work and thoroughly documented in the form of voucher
specimens contained in the research collections was published.
From 1925 until 1970, the collections were housed on campus as part of the Ohio
Archaeological and Historical Society (The Ohio State Museum). Professor James S. Hine served
as Curator until his death in 1930. He was followed by Edward S. Thomas. In 1955 the fish
collection of the Franz Theodore Stone Laboratory, The Ohio State University,
Put-in-Bay, Ohio
was brought to Columbus and became part of the Ohio State Museum collections. At that time
Milton B. Trautman transferred from the laboratory and became the Curator of Vertebrate
Collections. In 1962 the University's vertebrate collections were organized into distinct areas and
the Fish Division was established. In 1970 the Society (now Ohio Historical Society) moved to a
new location leaving the Zoological collections in the care of the University. At this time a change
was made in the name of the collections facility to The Ohio State University Museum of Zoology
(OSUM). Ted M. Cavender took over as Curator of the Fish Division in 1970 when the systematics
collections were transferred to The Ohio State University. The Museum of Zoology and all of its
divisions were moved to a newly renovated facility (the Museum of Biological Diversity, 1315
Kinnear Road, Columbus, Ohio 43212) in the Spring of 1992. This move combined almost all of
the University's natural history collections in one location.
Significant Additions of Historic Records
In order to better support the graduate programs in systematic ichthyology and
malacology at Ohio State it was the goal of the Museum of Zoology to gain distributional and
taxonomic representation of fishes and freshwater mollusks from the broad geographic area of
North America and to gain particular strengths in the Ohio, Mississippi and Great Lakes basins.
The systematics program in ichthyology involving graduate students working with the Curator,
was responsible for many of the additions in fishes. In 1974 the Museum of Zoology acquired the
Gerking Collection of Indiana fishes from Indiana University. This was a statewide collection
made by Shelby Gerking mostly in the years 1940-1943 (Gerking, 1945). The Missouri State
Collections made by Bill Pflieger of the Missouri Department of Conservation between the years
1977-1983 were transferred to Ohio State and catalogued. They provide coverage of many of the
Missouri drainages and are rich in large study series of individuals. TVA survey specimens from
work in the Tennessee Valley drainages were added between the years 1974 and 1985. These
collections in a historical context, compliment earlier surveys by TVA that are found, for example,
at the University of Michigan. In 1991, most of the extensive salmonid collection housed at
Colorado State University, Robert Behnke in charge, was transferred to Ohio State University.
The large New Jersey coastal marine collection from Ichthyological Associates Laboratory at
Absecon made in the period 1972-1974 was brought to The Ohio State University in 1981. In
1992, as part of Greg Varney's graduate research, a number of large collections from Louisiana,
Arkansas and Mississippi were transferred to Ohio State from Northeast Louisiana State
University with the cooperation of Neil Douglas.
The Fish Collection consists of teaching and research sections. The research section is
composed of alcohol stored specimens, osteological material (about 4500 lots), and cleared and
stained glycerin stored fishes. The teaching collection is not catalogued. It is used for instruction
in the following classes: Zoology 470 Biology of Vertebrates; Zoology 626 Biology of Fishes;
Ichthyology 621 (Taught at Stone Laboratory, Put-ln-Bay, Ohio).
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Rainbow Darter (Etheostoma caeruleum)