As part of the ongoing rehousing and improvement of its invertebrate collections, the California Academy of Sciences seeks to integrate three large molluscan collections it has recently acquired. The new collections include major holdings of chitons and sea slugs. In addition, adjunct materials such as color transparencies, microscope slides, and publications were donated with the collections, increasing their value to researchers. Identifications of the donated specimens will be made by visiting experts partially supported by the project. The Academy will also begin to re-curate its previous collections of these two groups that are preserved in liquid; such wet specimens contain the soft body parts lost in traditional dry mollusc preparations and thus are extremely useful. Finally, computerization of collection data for the mollusks, begun in a previous award, will continue.
