9616706 Lavenberg The Los Angeles County Museum (LACM) houses collections of extant species of all major groups of vertebrates. Among these, the birds and mammals have been computerized but the fishes, amphibians and reptiles have not. This project will capture electronically the label data for 143,000 specimen-lots of amphibians and reptiles and 235,000 specimen-lots of fishes. In addition, the LACM will database the collections of frozen tissues, skeletonized preparations, radiographs, and the like that are associated with these collections. This computerization effort will facilitate the scientific use of the resource by making the collections information available on the WWW. More importantly, however, the information about the biodiversity of these organisms in the geographic regions represented by the holdings of the LACM will be available for use by land and resource managers and other decision-makers, as well as in education. The estimated cost per specimen for this work is $0.92. The Reseach Collections in Systematics and Ecology Program of the NSF is providing $0.53 per specimen (58%). In partnership with the NSF on this project, the LACM is providing the remainder.
