Partnerships

The Department of the Interior (DOI), Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM, formerly the Minerals Management Service, MMS) has contracted with the National Museum of Natural History’s (NMNH), Department of Invertebrate Zoology (IZ) since 1979, to provide professional collection management services for the long-term curation of its collection of marine invertebrate specimens taken during the environmental baseline surveys of various oil and gas lease sites on the US East, West, and Gulf Coasts. These studies, sampled existing biological communities along the continental shelf to document their composition and to help predict the potential impacts of future oil/gas explorations.

More information of this collaboration can be found on the IZ-BOEM webpage

This project is part of an ongoing collection curation and archiving project funded through a contract National Institute of Health, National Cancer Institute (NCI) - Natural Products Branch. NCI conducts many bioprospecting surveys in marine and terrestrial environments. The material collected from these bioprospecting surveys are screened for anticancer compounds that may prove useful for medicinal purposes. Marine specimens are kept at the Smithsonian Institution's Museum Support Center in Suitland, Maryland and housed within the Invertebrate Zoology department's Pod 5. There, the morphological vouchers of marine invertebrate specimens are curated to Smithsonian standards and stored with professional collection management. 

More information of this collaboration can be found on the IZ-NCI webpage

The NOAA National Systematics Laboratory is located at the Smithsonian Institution National Museum of Natural History in Washington, D.C. Their work focuses on identifying, naming, describing, classifying, and determining the evolutionary relationships of organisms which is fundamental to the mission of NOAA Fisheries, because a better understanding marine species and how they interact with each other and their environment is an essential step toward ecosystem-based management. As such, the lab delivers basic information that is necessary to conserve, manage, protect, and restore marine ecosystems and living resources.

With nearly 19 million specimens, the US Antarctic Program (USAP) collection is the basis for taxonomic knowledge of Antarctic marine invertebrates, and includes type and non-type material dating back to the U.S. Exploring Expedition of 1838-1842. In 1995, the Department of Invertebrate Zoology entered into a cooperative agreement with the National Science Foundation (NSF) Office of Polar Programs to provide support for the cataloging and management of the USAP collections housed at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History (NMNH). NSF-sponsored investigators working in polar regions continue to deposit specimens and associated data at the NMNH. Future large collections will be acquired from NSF-sponsored Long Term Environmental Research (LTER) projects that are ongoing in the Antarctic region.

Since its founding in 1892, the U.S. National Parasite Collections has been of vital importance to parasitology and has been under the care of scientists and curators of the Agricultural Research Service of the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA). This holding of specimens contains over 100,000 cataloged lots, with potentially thousands of individual specimens per lot, 3,000 holotypes, and 7,000 type series. With an estimated annual growth rate of 1,000 to 1,500 specimens lots and frequent global loan activity, the USNPC collection is among the most active parasite collections in the world.

More information of this collaboration can be found on the IZ-USNPC webpage