Collection Significance Report:
Zoology: Non-Insect Arthropods
(Arachnids, Crustaceans & others)
Mike Rutherford, March 2008
About this Document
This document is extracted from a report by Glasgow
Museums submitted to the Scottish Executive’s Recognition
Committee as part of its recognition scheme for nonnational collections.
Overview
Arthropods are the largest phylum of animals and include
insects, arachnids, crustaceans, and others. More than 80%
of described living animal species are arthropods, with over
a million modern species described. They range in size from
microscopic plankton to crabs several metres long.
Collection Size
Approximately 51,000 specimens – dried specimens and specimens in spirit.
The Collection
The non-insect arthropod collection consists of Chelicerates (spiders, scorpions,
ticks, mites, etc), Crustaceans (crabs, lobsters, shrimps, barnacles, woodlice, etc)
and Myriapods (centipedes and millipedes).
Chelicerates – There are about 10 dried Merostomata (horseshoe crab) specimens;
approximately 30 Pycnogonida (sea-spiders) all in spirits; and approximately 40
dried Arachnids (spiders, scorpions, harvestmen, mites, ticks and pseudoscorpions)
and 50,000 in spirits.
Crustaceans – There are approximately 500 samples of dried Ostracods (seed
shrimps) many mounted in slides; approximately 50 dried Cirripedia (barnacles); 100
dried Malacostracans (lobsters, crabs, and shrimps) and approximately 800
specimens in spirits. Most specimens are British but there are a few foreign species
as well.
Myriapods – There are approximately 100 British centipedes in spirits with a few
large foreign specimens; and approximately 100 British millipedes in spirits; with a
few foreign specimens.
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Collection Significance
The arthropod collections are very important in a Scottish context, and the spider
collections are important in a national and international context. The strength of this
collection is in the number and range of Scottish spiders with virtually all families and
habitats covered in the 50,000 specimens. The data associated with these is also
very detailed, giving details of habitat, field conditions, dates, times, etc. Some of the
Scottish spiders in the collection have been published in the proceedings of the
British Arachnological Society, for example Pardosa amentata.
The crustacean collections of Ostracods and Malacostracans also cover a wide
range of species from around the UK. The marine crustaceans from the west of
Scotland are of particularly high importance. The data associated with many of the
specimens provides very important collection information as they were collected by
the University of Glasgow field station at Millport.
Although most specimens were gathered by recent collectors there are a few
important specimens from early collectors including Alexander Patience (1865-1954)
who was an expert on crustaceans around the beginning of the twentieth century.
His collection includes several possible type specimens of woodlice.
Bibliography
Beaumont, David (1991) ‘Atypical Pardosa amentata (Clerck, 1775) Males from the
Isle of Islay, Inner Hebrides, Scotland’, Newsletter of the British Arachnological
Society 60: 4
Moore, P.G. & E.G. Hancock. (2004) ‘Alexander Patience (1865-1954): Glasgow's
little-known Edwardian carcinologist’ Glasgow Naturalist 24 (2): 119-129.
How to Cite this Document
The full bibliographic reference for this document is shown below. Make sure to add
the date you downloaded the document.
Rutherford, M (2008) Collection Significance Report: Zoology: Non-Insect Arthropods, (Arachnids,
Crustaceans & others), Glasgow Museums, online at: http://collections.glasgowmuseums.com/
media/zoology_non-insect_arthropods_significance_report.pdf, last downloaded dd/mm/yyyy
This document is released under a Creative Commons licence requiring
attribution and prohibiting commercial and derivative exploitation. For more
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information see http://creativecommons.org/
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