Museum of Southwestern Biology - Mammal specimens (MSB-MAMM)

Division of Mammals, Museum of Southwestern Biology, Albuquerque, NM. The Division of Mammals contains over 325,000 catalogued specimens and is now the 2nd largest in the world. Specimens date back to the 1880's with the majority documenting the rapid environmental change that has occurred since the 1950's. The collections are taxonomically broad, representing 27 orders, 106 families, 531 genera, ~1,700 species. The majority from the Orders Rodentia (257,000), Chiroptera (26,000), Carnivora (20,000), Soricomorpha (15,000) and Artiodactyla (7,700). The collections are world-wide in scope (78 countries and all 50 US states) with particularly strong holdings from Western North America (225,000 specimens), Beringia and high latitudes (37,000 from Alaska, Russia and Canada), Mongolia (6,500 specimens and parasites), and Latin America (10,200 specimens from Bolivia 7,000 from Chile; 10,000 from Panama). The collection contains 85 holotypes or paratypes, 179 parasite symbiotypes and 22 virus symbiotypes. Important collections integrated into the MSB include the USGS Biological Surveys collection (30,000), the UIMNH (Hoffmeister) Collection (33,000), and the Rausch Collection (4,000 specimens and parasites). Specimens range from traditional skin/skull and fluid vouchers to "holistic vouchers" containing skin, skull, post-cranial skeleton, up to seven tissue types (heart, kidney, liver, lung, spleen, muscle, blood), cell suspensions, and ecto and endo parasites. Additionally, frozen tissue samples are available for about 200,000 individual mammals and date back to the late 1970's. 37,000 specimens have serology data associated with hantavirus surveillance programs in the Americas. The MSB houses an extensive archive of field journals and catalogues that date to the 1900's and are associated with specimens held in the collection. The collections are growing rapidly through the active research programs of curators, staff and students and ongoing collaborations with other institutions and governmental agencies.
Contacts: Jon Dunnum, jldunnum@unm.edu
Collection Type: Preserved Specimens
Management: Data snapshot of local collection database
Last Update: 20 January 2020
IPT / DwC-A Source:
Import from Arctos IPT
Digital Metadata: EML File
Access Rights: http://arctosdb.org/home/data/
Cite this collection:
Museum of Southwestern Biology - Mammal specimens. Occurrence dataset (ID: 202418d1-b16d-46a7-80bc-81463fa76a97) https://biorepo.neonscience.org/portal/content/dwca/MSB-MAMM_DwC-A.zip accessed via the NEON Biorepository Data Portal, https://biorepo.neonscience.org/, 2024-12-09).
Collection Statistics
  • 42,972 specimen records
  • 42,972 (100%) georeferenced
  • 40,158 (93%) identified to species
  • 10 families
  • 39 genera
  • 99 species
  • 99 total taxa (including subsp. and var.)
Extra Statistics
Show Geographic Distribution
Show Family Distribution
Taxon Distribution
Taxon Distribution
  • Baiomys (23)
  • Lagurus (4)
  • Lemmiscus (7)
  • Lemmus (10)
  • Microtus (2757)
  • Myodes (2010)
  • Neotoma (568)
  • Ochrotomys (37)
  • Onychomys (907)
  • Oryzomys (4)
  • Peromyscus (20780)
  • Phenacomys (3)
  • Podomys (35)
  • Reithrodontomys (764)
  • Sigmodon (2663)
  • Synaptomys (18)