Original Article
Julia Alvarez Barco
Abstract
The biological collections represent the natural heritage of the planet; these are repositories of information of natural history, of biodiversity and are the source of study for the management in the area of conservation regarding public and science matters. Since the 60’s the Venezuelan oil industry sponsored universities and scientific institutions for biodiversity studies. From 1995, FUDENA-CIAC has been collecting marine mollusk all over the coast line. In 2010 we got officially registered in the Biodiversity National System of Biological Collections. The objective of the study is to promote and communicate what exists and the importance of Mollusca collections in Venezuela as natural history heritage. To evaluate the importance of the collection we compared the status condition of the Mollusca collections all over the country and the main biological collections in the world. The results are that Venezuela has only 4 Mollusca collections (including ours) are registered at the national collection system. In addition, we compared FUDENA’s collection with other collections from Europe, Asia, North America and South America which contained mollusks from Venezuela and we obtained that FUDENA’s collection is the most complete Venezuelan Mollusca collection in the world, with 11.223 registries, 8 of them being Type. Those registries came from 257 campaigns, expeditions and field works from the West, Central and East coast, insular zone and Atlantic facades. The collections include samples from Chile, Argentina, Cuba, Colombia, Panamá and Bonaire, as well. We have to add that we have gotten donations from Ecuador, Spain, Denmark, Indonesia, Filipinas and USA, with 700 registries from foreign countries.