Canadian Museum of Nature Crustacea Collection

Occurrence Specimen
Latest version published by Canadian Museum of Nature on Feb 5, 2026 Canadian Museum of Nature
Home:
https://nature.ca/en/our-science/collections/
Publication date:
February 5, 2026
License:
CC-BY 4.0

Download the latest version of this resource data as a Darwin Core Archive (DwC-A) or the resource metadata as EML or RTF:

Data as a DwC-A file download 88,508 records in English (13 MB) - Update frequency: irregular
Metadata as an EML file download in English (10 KB)
Metadata as an RTF file download in English (7 KB)

Description

Dating back to the 1800s, the Canadian Museum of Nature's Crustacea Collection contains specimens associated with the exploration and development of Canada. Gammaridea, Caprellidea, Isopoda, Hyperiidea, and Mysidacea are the major groups found in the collection, which totals ca. 176,000 lots. The Amphipoda representation is particularly substantial as a result of the many years of research by Dr. Edward L. Bousfield

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 59,780 records.

1 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.

Occurrence (core)
59780
Multimedia 
98

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:

Gagnon J, Blades R (2026). Canadian Museum of Nature Crustacea Collection. Version 1.70. Canadian Museum of Nature. Occurrence dataset. https://ipt.nature.ca/resource?r=cmn_crustacea&v=1.70

Rights

Researchers should respect the following rights statement:

The publisher and rights holder of this work is Canadian Museum of Nature. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution (CC-BY 4.0) License.

GBIF Registration

This resource has been registered with GBIF, and assigned the following GBIF UUID: 87f42a91-8dfd-44f1-aabb-8b6ef14aba82.  Canadian Museum of Nature publishes this resource, and is itself registered in GBIF as a data publisher endorsed by Canada Biodiversity Information Facility.

Keywords

Occurrence; Specimen; Occurrence

Contacts

Jean-Marc Gagnon
  • Curator ●
  • Originator ●
  • Point Of Contact
  • Curator, Invertebrate Zoology Collections
Canadian Museum of Nature
Ottawa
Ontario
CA
  • 1-613-364-4066
Rob Blades
  • Metadata Provider
  • Digital Collections Information Manager
Canadian Museum of Nature
Ottawa
Ontario
CA

Geographic Coverage

The primary geographic representation is North America (not exclusively), with emphasis on Canada, including Canadian Arctic. A large proportion of the taxa are marine (Northeast Pacific, Arctic and Northwest Atlantic).

Bounding Coordinates South West [2.811, -180], North East [83.026, -28.125]

Taxonomic Coverage

The Crustacea Collection contains strong taxonomic representation of the following large groups: Cladocera, Ostracoda, Copepoda, Amphipoda, Isopoda, Cumacea, Mysidacea, Euphausidea, and Decapoda. Amphipods are particularly well represented, following the field work and taxonomic research of Dr. Edward L. Bousfield.

Class Cladocera (water flea)
Subclass Copepoda
Order Ostracoda, Amphipoda, Isopoda, Cumacea, Euphausiacea, Decapoda
Family Mysidae

Temporal Coverage

Formation Period late 1800"s to current

Additional Metadata

Alternative Identifiers 87f42a91-8dfd-44f1-aabb-8b6ef14aba82
https://ipt.nature.ca/resource?r=cmn_crustacea