The NMNH US Antarctic Research Program Page is OPEN!

(Oneirophanta mutabilis mutabilis click for specimen info)

Today, I wanted to announce that the United States Antarctic Research Program (USARP) office in the Smithsonian NMNH Invertebrate Zoology Department opened their website today!!(click to go see!)

This has been an ambitious project to catalog ALL of the Antarctic and subAntarctic marine invertebrates (including but not limited to corals, jellies, worms, crustaceans, mollusks, and of course...echinoderms!) which have been collected under the auspices of the USARP since 1963 and housed in Washington DC in the collections at National Museum of Natural History! This project is of course, supported by the NMNH and the National Science Foundation!!


I have written up how I have worked with the USARP in order to get the specimens and this website up and running (link here).

and mentioned some neat pictures and a site that features the people involved wth USARP!

Their website has a bunch of cool features!  For example...let's take a look at the deep-sea molpadid sea cucumber Molpadia musculus!!

1. Specimen Photos!

You get an expert photo for some of the available specimens!

(NMNH specimen USNM E33281.341505)

2. DATA!!

You also get a summary of all the NMNH holdings of that particular Antarctic or subAntarctic species!!

What's even MORE cool???? You can get this information MAPPED onto a display of the Antarctic area and classified by depth range!!!!

And of course, what good would it be if it didn't come cross-referenced with a taxonomic scheme and basic classification information???

The website is a work in progress...but from what I've seen the database is VERY well populated...so definitely a good start!!

The citation:

Lemaitre, R., M. G. Harasewych, and J. Hammock (Editors). 2009. ANTIZ v 1.0: A Database of Antarctic and Subantarctic Marine Invertebrates. National Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Institution. World Wide Web electronic publication. URL http://invertebrates.si.edu/ANTIZ