Crustacea

There are approximately 5,558 digitally-registered samples in the Tel Aviv Zoological Museum Crustacea collection. Of these, 5,195 from the Mediterranean Sea, 194 from the Red Sea and 36 from inland waters of Israel. Approximately 50 are type specimens. Specimen Dates: 1940s through to the present.
 
The first records in the 1940s through the 1960s represents the intensive investigations of the biota of the continental shelf off Israel by the Sea Fisheries Research Station (SFRS) that highlighted the number of Erythrean species that have been established along the coast (Gottlieb-Gilat collection).

In 1962, and again in 1965, Israeli expeditions collected material off Dahlak Archipelago in the southern Red Sea (ISERSE), including decapod crustaceans. Part of the material is deposited in the collection. In 1967, a joint program by the Smithsonian Institution, the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and the SFRS was established to investigate the spread of the Erythrean biota in the Levant (Israel, Cyprus, Rhodes) and its impact on the native biota. 

Prof. Ch. Lewinsohn greatly furthered knowledge of the decapod crustaceans (especially Anomura) from the Red Sea and the Levantine basin of the Mediterranean.Until his death in 1983 Prof. Ch. Lewinsohn enriched the collection with many new records of Erythrean species. By the early 1980s it was widely perceived that the littoral and infralittoral biota of the LevantineSea has been undergoing a rapid and profound change. Since the 1990s most of the specimens accrued to the collection stem either from the previously unexplored deeper parts of the continental shelf and slope or newly-recorded alien species.

Significant new collecting is mainly through fieldwork relating to active research programmes and monitoring campaigns or surveys conducted by the National Institute of Oceanography, Israel Oceanographic & Limnological Research. Combined, these activities contribute specimens to almost the whole range of the Crustacean collections.

Collections