Mammal Diversity Database type specimen metadata

Auxiliary reference table of natural history museum collection metadata distributed with an MDD release. Each row corresponds to one institution that holds or has held type material cited in the MDD synonym table (mdd_synonyms).

Usage

mdd_type_specimen_metadata

Format

A tibble with 138 rows and 5 variables, with source column names normalized to snake_case during data import:

abbreviation

Standard acronym or abbreviation used to identify the collection in the MDD and broader taxonomic literature (e.g. "AMNH", "MNHN", "USNM"); corresponds to the collection codes cited in the mdd_holotype and mdd_type_specimen_link fields of mdd_synonyms.

full_name

Full official name of the institution or collection (e.g. "American Museum of Natural History", "Museum National d'Histoire Naturelle").

city_and_country

City and country where the institution is located, formatted as "City, Country" (e.g. "New York, United States of America").

synonyms_notes

Alternative or historical names by which the collection has been known in the synonymic literature (e.g. "British Museum (Natural History)" for BM, "United States National Museum" for USNM); NA when no alternative name is recorded.

online_website_database_if_available

URL to the institution's online specimen database or collection portal, when publicly available; NA when no online resource has been identified.

Source

Mammal Diversity Database release archive (https://www.mammaldiversity.org), distributed as TypeSpecimenMetadata_...csv within each versioned release.

Details

This table serves as a lookup reference linking collection abbreviations used throughout mdd_synonyms to their full institutional names, geographic locations, and online portals. It covers 138 institutions spanning all major zoogeographic regions, from large international collections such as AMNH, MNHN, and USNM to regional and national natural history museums in Latin America, Asia, Africa, and Oceania.

The synonyms_notes column documents historical or colloquial collection names that may appear in older taxonomic literature, aiding users who encounter non-standard abbreviations in pre-MDD sources. Notable examples include BM (formerly British Museum (Natural History)), MCZ (Museum of Comparative Zoology, Harvard), and ZMA (Zoölogisch Museum, Amsterdam, merged with RMNH in 2010).

URLs in online_website_database_if_available link directly to mammalogy or specimen-search pages where possible, and to general institutional pages otherwise. Link availability and validity may change over time.