Algae World: diatom collections

 The Grunow Collection (Naturhistorisches Museum Wien)

diatom slides from the Grunow collection

Slides in the Grunow Collection, Naturhistorisches Museum Wien. The slides are organized according to the sample numbers in Grunow's accessions book. In some cases, several slides were made from the same sample (as in the sample 1745 slides in this image). Unmounted material is available for many but not all samples; often this is indexed via a common or interesting species, rather than via the sample accession number.

Slide labels sometimes bear minimal information, but may record the positions of noteworthy specimens (as in the right-hand slides here). Some slides are dry mounts (the diatoms are in air, between the cover-slip and slide), whereas others (especially those prepared later in Grunow's career) are in Canada Balsam.

Introduction

In June 2009, I visited the Grunow collection of diatom slides, drawings, notes and unmounted material, located in the Naturhistorisches Museum in Vienna. The Grunow collection is housed in the Cryptogam section of the herbarium, which is curated by Dr Anton Igersheim. I had support from a SYNTHESYS award (SYNTHESYS is a European Union-funded Integrated Infrastructure Initiative grant) and was in Vienna primarily to examine types of species of Sellaphora, Fallacia, Lyrella, Petroneis and Nitzschia and to visit the University herbarium to assess and survey the slides collections of Prof. Dr. Lothar Geitler (1899–1990). My aim in these pages on the Grunow collection is to help others to maximize any opportunity they may have to visit and use this important resource.

The next page describes the content and organization of the collection.

Acknowledgment

Preparation of this and related web-pages was made possible by research that received support from the SYNTHESYS Project http://www.synthesys.info/ which is financed by European Community Research Infrastructure Action under the FP6 "Structuring the European Research Area" Programme.


David Mann, August 2009

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