History of the Sector

The Department was established, along with other divisions of the Museum, in late 1931. It adopted the standardized methods of storage and cataloguing of collections developed for the Museum in 1932, which continue to be used today.

In the pre-war years, the Department’s staff included B.N. Tsvetkov (a specialist on terrestrial mollusks), as well as external researchers such as carcinologist Ya.A. Birstein and V.I. Sychevskaya, who worked on spiders. The head of the Department, G.G. Abrikosov, studied bryozoans while simultaneously teaching at the Department of Invertebrate Zoology at Moscow State University. Staff of the Department contributed to major academic series, including Guide to Zoology, Life of Freshwaters, and The Animal World of the USSR.

In the post-war years, the Department included N.L. Sokolskaya (until 1980), who studied freshwater oligochaetes of the USSR, and malacologist Z.G. Palenichko (in the 1940s). The head of the Department, E.V. Borutsky (a specialist on harpacticoid copepods and isopods), held multiple posts simultaneously and was not always able to devote sufficient attention to the Department’s work.

In 1952, the only volume of Fauna of the USSR written by in-house staff was published—Borutsky’s monograph on harpacticoids. Some other volumes of this prestigious series were authored by former staff or external curators of the Museum (e.g., G.B. Zevina, An.A. Schileyko).

Beginning in 1971, N.I. Kudryashova, a specialist on water mites (Hydrachnidia), joined the Department. The Museum’s collection of Hydrachnidia is now one of the largest in the world. From 1974 to 1988, the collection of marine gastropods was curated by V.N. Goryachev.

Not all collections were actively processed in the post-war decades. Materials on arachnids, myriapods, and most marine invertebrates (other than mollusks) remained largely unprocessed, although new accessions continued to be accepted. In addition to the shortage of qualified staff, this situation was due to extremely cramped facilities, which persisted until the Department moved to new premises in the mid-1980s.

The structure of the Department changed significantly in 1981, when M.V. Geptner became head. During the 1980s–1990s, specialists in the major groups of terrestrial and aquatic invertebrates were recruited: mollusks (D.L. Ivanov, I.V. Muratov, A.V. Sysoev), arachnids (K.G. Mikhailov), ixodid ticks (O.V. Voltzit), myriapods (Ar.A. Schileyko), decapod crustaceans (V.A. Spiridonov), marine isopods (B.V. Mezhov), and polychaetes (A.V. Sikorsky). Geptner himself supervised the copepod collection. In connection with the move to new premises in the 1980s, a new open-shelf storage system (replacing the older wooden cabinets) was introduced. Both staff and external curators actively worked on collection management. External curators processed the coral collection, parasitic nematodes, certain groups of crustaceans and myriapods, and echinoderms. Although the level of activity decreased somewhat in the 1990s, the overall structure of the Department’s work has remained unchanged.

All Department staff took an active role in creating the new invertebrate exhibition in the Museum’s Lower Hall during the 1980s. Methodological guides were prepared on the basis of these exhibits.

In the late 1990s, several monographs were published by Department staff: descriptions of type collections (D.L. Ivanov and A.V. Sysoev on mollusks), a catalogue of spiders of the former USSR (K.G. Mikhailov), as well as theoretical-taxonomic works (O.V. Voltzit on ixodid ticks). All of these were published in Proceedings of the Zoological Museum or the Museum’s new series Zoological Studies.

Since the early 1990s, several specialized journals devoted to mollusks, arachnids, and crustaceans have been published with the Department’s participation. These journals have served as an additional means of attracting both specialists to work in the Department and new collections, especially type material. Students of Moscow State University and Moscow State Pedagogical University (formerly Moscow State Pedagogical Institute named after V.I. Lenin) have continuously assisted the Department’s work.

Since the 1990s, with the general decline in scientific activity, particularly in the CIS countries, the Museum has received numerous, often insufficiently processed collections of arachnids, crustaceans, and mollusks. Earlier, similar poorly curated collections of terrestrial invertebrates were received from ecologists working within the Academy of Sciences of the USSR and the Moscow Pedagogical Institute, and marine collections from VNIRO and other institutions. Work is currently ongoing to catalogue and process these holdings.

Heads of the Department over the years:

• G.G. Abrikosov (1932–1941)

• E.V. Borutsky (1941–1945, 1950–1976)

• I.I. Malevich (1946–1950)

• N.I. Kudryashova (Acting Head, 1976–1981)

• M.V. Geptner (1981–1996)

• V.A. Spiridonov (1996–2000)

• D.L. Ivanov (2000–2013)

• M.V. Kalyakin (2013–present)