Hey everyone,

My name is John Pfeiffer, I am an undergraduate student at Northern
Michigan University in Marquette, Michigan. Over the past few years I
have grown increasingly interested in malacology, especially freshwater
mussels.  The majority of the medias I have been using to attempt to
satisfy my enthusiasm have been either digital or in text.  I am
anxious to pursue malacology in a more personal approach and would like
to create a collection of freshwater mussels for my university.

The collection intends to contain all the species inhabiting North
America, south to the Mexican Plateau, 302 species, according to Dan
Graf and Kevin Cummings in their recent publication of the global
distribution of freshwater mussels.  Although Northern Michigan
University has no appreciable mussel collection, it does have a
permanent museum with many storage options capable of properly housing
a mussel collection.  The museum currently contains extensive
collections of invertebrates including, insects, freshwater crabs, and
to a lesser extent freshwater sponges and leeches.

To my knowledge, there is no significant mussel collection in all of
Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. This excludes an important portion of
Michigan’s academic community and certainly has the potential to
fulfill an important institutional and regional purpose.  I am sure
some of you are  aware of the complicated and convoluted taxonomic
history of freshwater mussels (4178 described species compared to 837
valid species). This is my reasoning for assembling a such a specific
collection. My goal is to compile an up to date and precise collection
of the freshwater mussels of the Neartic. Not only would it be more
difficult to house a large collection of mussels and other taxa, it
would further complicate the simple beauty of a collection containing,
purely, the complete mussel diversity of an entire region.  Perhaps a
collection, the first of its kind. A small, precise, and complete
collection. The shells in this collection would not necessarily have to
remain at NMU for upcoming years, pictures and descriptions could be
sufficient to maintain the collection after its completion. As in
regard to databasing, I would use standard techniques and would be sure
to include all the information from the donator, for easy location and
return if needed.

If you are interested in any more information about the potential
collection or perhaps interested in donating please contact me. I would
reply promptly and with as much information as possible, obviously I am
new to this aspect of malacology, but receive your questions and ideas
with great enthusiasm.

Thanks,

John Pfeiffer
[log in to unmask]
(248)408-0290


Apologies for the long post

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