Marine Invertebrates

The Marine Invertebrates section is active in research on a variety of taxa, such as annelids, cnidarians and crustaceans, and holds extensive collections of most marine phyla.

The Australian Museum Marine Invertebrates Collection contains over 511,000 specimens and lots. The collection dates from the 1800s and is one of the largest in the Southern Hemisphere, it contains both wet and dry preserved specimens, microscope slides, Scanning Electron Microscope (SEM) preparations, photographic images, books and journals. The collection is a base for active (mainly taxonomic) research carried out by scientists in the museum, institutions within Australia and around the world.

The collection includes over twenty major groups of marine invertebrates with the exception of molluscs (please see the Malacology collection for more information). The collection also includes freshwater and terrestrial representatives.

Taxa represented include, Annelida, Bryozoa, Cnidaria, Ctenophora, Crustacea, Echinodermata, Nematoda, Nemertea, Platyhelminthes, Porifera, Pycnogonida, Tunicata, and various other phyla including protozoans. Particular strengths are the number and diversity of samples for the Annelida, Crustacea and Echinodermata.

What are Marine Invertebrates?

Discover the Australian Museum's Marine Invertebrates Collection featuring water-dwelling animals without backbones, including jellyfish, crabs, octopuses, crustaceans, starfish and coral. Listen to Professor Shane Ahyong, Senior Principal Research Scientist along with Dr Claire Rowe, Collection Manager, as they share why we collect this diverse groups of creatures that live in water for research and conservation outcomes.

Marine Invertebrates are animals without backbones that live in the water.

The vast majority of marine invertebrates live in the sea, there's a whole group of, 20 odd phyla that we deal with and that can include things like crabs, lobsters, crustaceans; which have shells and spines and legs, but we also have squishy things like jellyfish, sea anemones, spiny stuff like sea urchins, starfish and all kinds of other worm-like creatures, whether they be parasites or worms you see in the beach.

My name is Shane Ahyong and I'm the Head of Marine Invertebrates at the Australian Museum and a Senior Principal Research Scientist. When we think about marine conservation and conservation of animals in aquatic habitats, in rivers, we generally only think about large animals and seabirds, whales, fish, and of course, we should. But it's easy to forget that there are the aquatic invertebrates in there as well, and they are very often threatened to a greater degree.

Conservation is a really important issue for aquatic invertebrates. And it's also, very easily underestimated by, by the average person because most invertebrates and are not seen, they're inconspicuous, they often come out at night so you don't see them. So many people don't even realize they're there. If we destroy the habitats that they live in, they’re gone.

We get to see a range of animals that most people would never see. We do exploration in the deep sea and there are millions of marine invertebrates down there, too.

My name is Claire Rowe, and I'm Collection Manager of Marine Invertebrates. The marine invertebrates collection is over 500,000 lots. So we're one of the largest collections in the museum. We cover a lot of different phyla. All the different departments of the museum, they will have one taxa that they focus on and we're basically; other, so we're everything else.

So we have specimens in our collection that have been collected from Australia since the 1860s, though the oldest specimen in our collection was collected in the States in 1802 and it's an Amphipod, which is basically a small crustacean. So we're a very complex collection.

Most of our collection is built up of Arthropods, so they're things like crustaceans or sea spiders, but we cover other things like Cnidaria; so your corals and jellyfish, Echinoderms; so sea stars, we also cover, anemones, bryozoa, we're a very diverse collection.

Some of the animals that we deal with are just gorgeous. They're beautiful. I mean, they all are, of course, but there are others that we could describe as ghastly. But they all have their own interest and their scientific value and, we treat all things equally around here.

The Australian Museum Marine Invertebrates Collection

The Australian Museum Marine Invertebrates Collection includes over 13,000 type specimens (those on which the scientific description of a species is based). Material is housed both at the main Sydney CBD museum site and the Castle Hill Discovery Centre, and represents one of the oldest, largest, most diverse and best-studied assemblages of Australasian and Indo-Pacific invertebrate taxa. The collection has a focus on material from Australia, particularly New South Wales, but also has strong holdings for most taxa across the Indo-Pacific region as well as important samples from other international locations.

Approximately 46% of the collection has been digitised by staff and volunteers. Photographic images of the specimens have been taken and their records uploaded on to the Museum’s digital database. This task is ongoing and increases each time new material is added to the collection.

Get involved

Loans and donations: The Marine Invertebrates group processes loan requests and welcomes donations of marine invertebrate material. Please contact AMRI in relation to loans and donations.

Get involved: Volunteers to assist with Marine Invertebrates activities are always in demand. Please register your interest here.

International Research Hub

The Marine Invertebrate Collection is an important resource for the researchers working in the museum. Research within the department currently covers shrimps, crabs, amphipods, isopods, cnidarians, annelids and many other taxa. The department is a centre for collaboration with universities and scientific institutions around Australia and around the world. Many honours, masters and doctoral students work with the research staff and the museum collections.

Researchers at the museum organise and participate in collection expeditions within Australia and internationally, from the shallow waters of Sydney Harbour to the deep-sea seamounts off the south coast of Tasmania. The Marine Invertebrates department is also actively involved in Citizen Science projects, such as ‘Upside-down Jellyfish in Lake Macquarie’.

Other collections