Description
The Moore Laboratory of Zoology is located at Occidental College. The bird collection houses over 64,000 ornithological specimens. It is the largest Mexican bird collection in the world. The vast majority of the specimens are study skins (60,677), but the MLZ also contains 1,364 skeletons and 536 sets of nests and eggs. Robert T. Moore and his wife Margaret founded the MLZ in 1950, moving Moore’s personal collection from his Pasadena home to the building at Occidental College. Prominent collectors aside from Moore include Chester C. Lamb (who worked as Moore’s primary collector for decades and collected over 40,000 of the MLZ’s specimens), the Olalla Brothers and Sons, Mario del Toro Aviles, C.F. Underwood, J.T. Wright, and W.W. Brown. The collection continues its growth today with the addition of species from the western U.S. and Mexico.
Data Records
The data in this occurrence resource has been published as a Darwin Core Archive (DwC-A), which is a standardized format for sharing biodiversity data as a set of one or more data tables. The core data table contains 63,302 records.
1 extension data tables also exist. An extension record supplies extra information about a core record. The number of records in each extension data table is illustrated below.
This IPT archives the data and thus serves as the data repository. The data and resource metadata are available for download in the downloads section. The versions table lists other versions of the resource that have been made publicly available and allows tracking changes made to the resource over time.
Versions
The table below shows only published versions of the resource that are publicly accessible.
How to cite
Researchers should cite this work as follows:
Moore Laboratory of Zoology (MLZ)
Rights
Researchers should respect the following rights statement:
The publisher and rights holder of this work is Moore Laboratory of Zoology. To the extent possible under law, the publisher has waived all rights to these data and has dedicated them to the Public Domain (CC0 1.0). Users may copy, modify, distribute and use the work, including for commercial purposes, without restriction.
GBIF Registration
This resource has been registered with GBIF, and assigned the following GBIF UUID: 905589dd-1f8f-4aee-95e6-5672466e348d. Moore Laboratory of Zoology publishes this resource, and is itself registered in GBIF as a data publisher endorsed by GBIF-US.
Keywords
Occurrence; Specimen; Occurrence
Contacts
- Metadata Provider ●
- Originator ●
- Point Of Contact
- Director/Curator
- 1600 Campus Road, Occidental College
- (323) 259-1352
- Content Provider ●
- Point Of Contact
- Collections Manager
- 1600 Campus Road, Occidental College
- 3232591320
- Point Of Contact
- Arctos Database Programmer
Geographic Coverage
The MLZ bird collection is global, with the largest holdings from Mexico (50,000 specimens) and Ecuador (6,100 specimens). Other geographic strengths include Honduras (2,200 specimens), Guatemala (1,200 specimens), and Costa Rica (1,200 specimens). Most parts of Mexico are well-represented with the exception of Baja California and the Yucatan Peninsula.
| Bounding Coordinates | South West [-90, -180], North East [90, 180] |
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Taxonomic Coverage
Taxonomic strengths of the MLZ bird collection include Tyrannidae (7,494), Trochilidae (6,969), Passerellidae (5,171), Parulidae (3,923), Icteridae (3,651), Cardinalidae (3,611), Troglodytidae (2,866), Turdidae (2,810), and Thraupidae (2,508). Robert T. Moore described nearly all of the 82 bird holotypes, paratypes, and topotypes currently in the collection.
| Class | Aves |
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Temporal Coverage
| Living Time Period | 1830-present |
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Additional Metadata
http://vertnet.org/resources/norms.html
| Alternative Identifiers | 905589dd-1f8f-4aee-95e6-5672466e348d |
|---|---|
| https://ipt.vertnet.org/resource?r=mlz_bird |