Expeditions, Collecting Trips, and Cabinets

The fish collections now maintained in the SwedishMuseum of Natural History have largely been assembled in the course of directed expeditions starting in the second half of the 1850s and still continuing today. Expeditions provide for the best possible preserved material and the best possible selection of samples and specimens. Information assembled by such activities include various field observations, including notes on local names, live colours, habitat, behaviour and use of the fishes collected. When coupled to the potential of a correct identification based on preserved specimens, such information becomes much more reliable and useful. More recently, colour photographs of fishes and collecting sites have added to the documentation of both fauna and habitats. Needless to say, expeditions not only bring material for scientific study that will be available long after the species have gone extinct in the wild, but also document vanishing nature all over the planet.

We lump here many different kinds of collecting activities under the heading of Expeditions. The association with colonial exploration including numerous slave laborers and search for only spectacular objects, is definitely false. Most collecting now is done by students or single researchers with limited funding, and often in close collaboration with local institutions sharing the material assembled. The objective is generally to obtain scientifically useful specimens, that may increase understanding of the evolution of the earth and its biota. Scientific collections have no commercial value.

We list here also various Natural History Cabinets that have been integrated with the NRM collections. Foremost among those is that of King Adolf Fredrik, acquired by the AcademyofNatural Sciences (to which the museum belonged) in the early 1800s. Such cabinets have an interesting and varied history, but contrast in scientific value with biologically oriented collecting activities, because the animals in them were acquired for their value as curiosities, and they generally lack collecting data.

Find out more:
Museum Adolphi Friderici
The Gambia Expedition 1931
The Gambia Expedition 1950
Kashmir 1990-1997

Search collecting trips in NRM database