Natural History Museum - Biology and Public Health Department

With a growing need to catalog and make our collections available to students and researchers in the Biology Department, the TMCC Natural History Museum (NHM) was established in 2020 and has grown to include 15 collections that house over 10,000 plant and animal specimens representing the biodiversity of the Great Basin desert and Sierra Nevada mountains. Existing specimens included a handful of teaching specimens of unknown origins. Our collections are currently maintained by volunteer faculty and undergraduate research students.

The NHM is located in RDMT 410. Our collections are maintained by volunteer faculty and undergraduate research students. We are currently cataloging the specimens, taking high-resolution photographs, and archiving our collections on the ARCTOS Database. Currently, our collections are not open to the public and we are not equipped to store tissue samples from preserved specimens. However, display cases featuring collection specimens are available for public viewing in the Elizabeth Sturm Library.

Note: If you are interested in using specimens for your research, please see our loan policy.

TMCC Natural History Museum: What Is It?

Join Co-Director and Biology Professor Cecilia Vigil as she takes you inside the TMCC Natural History Museum! Home to over 10,000 plant and animal specimens, the museum showcases the biodiversity of northern Nevada and the importance of this resource for students, researchers, and the community.

A Special Museum Visit

Behind the Scenes

Purpose

The primary goals of the NHM at TMCC is for students to engage in application-based science, gain exposure to the invaluable roles that natural history museums serve in science and society, and develop professional skills. The NHM is unique because it serves first and foremost as a teaching museum, where students are involved in all steps from specimen collection to preservation to curation.

Specimen Collections

Herbarium

The herbarium collection houses over 2,000 specimens collected primarily from the Intermountain West. Nearly all specimens in the collections are donated from the personal collections of Dr. Megan Lahti. The intention of this collection is to capture the biodiversity of the Great Basin desert and surrounding ecosystems. Over 35 plant families are represented in the collections, and over 50% of the specimens were collected from Washoe County, Nevada. These collections are also contributed to and used by TMCC’s General Botany students.

Invertebrates

The invertebrate collections include our marine invertebrate and non-hexapod (non-insect) arthropods, and hexapod (entomology) collections. We estimate the collection size to be around 3,600 specimens. A majority of the marine invertebrate collections were a donation from the UNR Museum of Natural History and include mostly dried specimens (shells) from tropical oceans around the world. The arthropod collections include a diversity of species in both dried and fluid-preserved conditions. We estimate the entomology (hexapod insects) collection size to be 300 specimens. The entomology collections include pinned and fluid-preserved specimens primarily from the Great Basin desert, especially within northern Nevada.

Ichthyology

The fish collections include over 500 specimens representing over 30 species in the Western U.S. A majority of the marine invertebrate collections were a donation from the UNR Museum of Natural History. Many specimens are museum quality but lack collection data. We are actively working towards archiving our collections into the museum database including taxonomic information, collection data, and photographs.

Ornithology

The bird collection currently houses 150 bird specimens. Most specimens lack collection data, but we continue to add specimens to the collections with the goal of obtaining more representative species in northern Nevada and surrounding ecosystems. We are actively working towards archiving our collections into the museum database including taxonomic information, collection data, and photographs.

Herpetology

The Herpetology (amphibian and reptile) collections include over 500 specimens representing over 50 species in the Western U.S. A majority of the marine invertebrate collections were a donation from the UNR Museum of Natural History. Many specimens are museum quality but lack collection data.

Mammalogy

The mammalogy collections currently house 200 small mammal specimens from northern Nevada including the Great Basin and Sierra Nevada mountain range ecosystems. The collections include taxidermy, skull, pelt, and fluid-preserved specimens that are obtained primarily via salvage. We are actively working towards archiving our collections into the museum database including taxonomic information, collection data, and photographs.

Teaching Collections

The museum’s Teaching collections include a diverse variety of specimens obtained and used in our organismal biology courses and educational events. These specimens are intended to be used by both faculty and students and generally lack collection data. We are actively working towards archiving our collections into the museum database including taxonomic information, collection data, and photographs.

Value

Natural history museums are invaluable resources for the scientific community and society. They are analogous to libraries, but instead of books, they contain specimens from which scientific information can be collected indefinitely. Museum specimens are crucial to help us understand the past, present and future natural world.

Our collections are research-grade so they can be used by the scientific community for research purposes via collection data, physical specimens and tissue samples for genetic analyses. Our specimens are available online to the global scientific community in ARCTOS, an open-access database.