Description
The MVZ bird collection is one of the largest in the United States. It houses over 185,000 catalogued specimens, including 174 holotype and 2 syntypes. The majority of specimens are study skins, but the collection also contains over 21,000 skeletal specimens and 3,200 fluid-preserved specimens. Other types of preparations include flat specimens (wings, skins) and body skins with skeletons ("schmoos"). Tissues, anatomical parts (e.g., syrinx, stomach contents), and parasites are routinely preserved with specimens. Many specimens also are associated with cataloged audio recordings.
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 33,119 records.
5 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:
Museum of Vertebrate Zoology (MVZ), University of California, Berkeley
Rights
Researchers should respect the following rights statement:
The publisher and rights holder of this work is Museum of Vertebrate 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 not been registered with GBIF
Keywords
Occurrence; Specimen
Contacts
- Metadata Provider ●
- Originator ●
- Point Of Contact
- Point Of Contact
- Point Of Contact
Geographic Coverage
The MVZ bird collections are global. Geographic strengths are western North America from Alaska and British Columbia through southern Mexico. In addition, there are major series of specimens from Central America (especially Guatemala, El Salvador, and Costa Rica), South America (in particular, Colombia, Peru, Paraguay, and Argentina), the Hawaiian Islands, the South Pacific, Australia, and Africa.
| Bounding Coordinates | South West [-90, -180], North East [90, 180] |
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Taxonomic Coverage
The collection is taxonomically synoptic, with representatives of every Recent order of birds. For most orders there is at least 70% representation at the generic level.
| Class | Aves |
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Temporal Coverage
| Living Time Period | 1832 to present |
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Additional Metadata
http://vertnet.org/resources/norms.html
| Alternative Identifiers | http://ipt.vertnet.org:8080/ipt/resource?r=mvz_bird_ggbn |
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