Malacology Collection
The malacological collection contains more than 150,000 lots representing ca. 10,000 species. With respect to the individual subgroups of the molluscs, the material is distributed as follows: Aplacophora (worm molluscs), 87 series; Polyplacophora (chitons), about 1,300 series; Bivalvia (mussels), about 14,000 series; Scaphopoda (tusk shells), about 130 series; Gastropoda (snails), more than 130,000 series; Cephalopoda, about 3,400 series.
The collection contains material from all continents and from all oceans. Focuses of the collection are land snails from south-eastern Europe and Western Asia, north-western South America (Colombia, Peru) and Central Africa (Rwanda, Uganda), freshwater molluscs from Thailand and marine molluscs from the Antarctic and Patagonian regions and cephalopods, mainly from the Atlantic.
So far, more than 110,000 series have been recorded in a database. 37% of the data is georeferenced. The collection contains more than 1,500 type series. Among these are 257 holotypes, 13 lectotypes, 340 syntype series, 2 neotypes, 880 paratype series and 35 paralectotype series. Most taxa, of which type material is present, were described by the following authors: R. Brandt, E. Degner, W. Fauer, P. Glöer, B. Hausdorf, P. Kaiser, G. Pfeffer, L. Pfeiffer and H. Strebel.