University of Alabama (Herpetological and Decapod Collections)

The University of Alabama’s Department of Biological Sciences will rehouse and digitize its collection of decapods, which contains approximately 20,000 crayfish specimens. Department staff will hire and train paid and volunteer student workers who will catalog, label, and shelve specimens. Staff will also conduct database cleanup for crayfish lots from waterbodies across Alabama, updating taxonomy and georeferencing for increased accuracy. To advance the scientific understanding of the distribution and biodiversity of crayfishes and herpetofauna in the ecosystems in the Southeastern United States, staff will make specimen data available to the public by sharing information with online data repositories for natural history collections.