What has no backbone, more than one cell, but isn’t a plant? No, this isn’t a joke or a riddle. Allow us to introduce invertebrate zoology—the study of animals with no vertebrae (spine). Invertebrates (or inverts) include everything from marine animals like crabs, sea slugs, and corals, to terrestrial animals like insects, arachnids, and worms.
Even though they’re often overlooked, inverts are an incredibly biodiverse group of organisms that act as a building block for nature. In fact, ~90% of the world’s species are invertebrates. They help build reefs, are a critical part of food webs, pollinate plants, recycle nutrients, and more. Without them, Earth’s complex ecological systems would collapse.
As important as they are, only 20% of the inverts on Earth have been formally described or even studied. The Invertebrate Zoology Department at The Nat is actively helping increase this number for one of the most biodiverse regions in the world—Southern California and the Baja California Peninsula. For example, San Diego County alone has over 700 species of native bees (and no, that doesn’t include the invasive honeybee). We’re also home to multiple invertebrates that are classified as threatened or endangered.
From auditing, organizing, and digitizing our marine invertebrate collection, to describing new species, to creating a DNA barcode library of every insect in the state of California, to documenting the state of pollinators in our county—the invertebrate zoology team is working hard to conserve inverts in Southern California and the Baja California Peninsula.
Please contact the Invertebrate Zoology Department using our contact form under "Research."
