Sector of Invertebrates

The Department of Invertebrate Zoology was formally established in 1932. Its main tasks include the acquisition, preservation, and processing of collections representing various groups of invertebrates, as well as conducting comprehensive fundamental research based on these collections in the fields of systematics, taxonomy, functional morphology, faunistics, zoogeography, and phylogeny, primarily of arthropods and mollusks. The department’s holdings nominally represent (with varying completeness) more than half of the global diversity of invertebrate types and classes.

In total, the department houses about 1,500,000 specimens. The electronic databases contain 210,000 records. The number of specimens in the main groups is distributed as follows (with the number of types for each group given in parentheses):

• Arachnida — 250,000 (1,000)

• Crustacea — 50,000 (400)

• Gastropoda — 150,000 (300)

• Bivalvia — 5,000 (50)

• Acari — 20,000 (1,500)

• Myriapoda — 73,000 (300)

• Echinodermata — 22,000 (50)

• Annelida — 100,000 (165)

The total number of invertebrate species and subspecies represented in the museum by type specimens (holotypes, paratypes, neotypes, syntypes, etc.) exceeds 3,000. The number of entries in the electronic databases by groups is as follows:

• Gastropoda — 40,000

• Bivalvia — 3,000

• Acari — 13,660

• Myriapoda — 700

• Echinodermata — 1,500

The department is located on the first floor of the museum. To arrange a visit, please contact the staff in advance: Mollusk collections: +7 (495) 629-48-42; Mite collection: +7 (495) 629-59-82.