Financial support for the maintenance of INHS Annelida Collection, and for the collection and identification of specimens housed here, has been provided by the Illinois Natural History Survey, Illinois State Geological Survey, Illinois State Water Survey, Illinois Department of Natural Resources, Illinois Department of Transportation, Illinois Environmental Protection Agency, Society for Freshwater Science (formerly, Midwest Benthological Society, 1953-1975, then North American Benthological Society, 1975-2011), Natural Science Collections Alliance, Society for the Preservation of Natural History Collections, National Museum of Natural History (NMNH) – Smithsonian Institution, U.S. Geological Survey, U.S. Department of Agriculture (Soil Conservation Service), U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Commonwealth Edison Company, Central Illinois Public Service Company, Marathon Oil Company, The Herbert H. Ross Memorial Fund, American Fisheries Society, Northern Illinois Planning Commission, Illinois Coastal Zone Management Program, City Water, Light, and Power Company (Springfield, Illinois), Institute of Environmental Quality, and the Illinois Institute of Environmental Studies (Water Resources Center), U.S. National Park Service, Glen Canyon Environmental Studies, Illinois Nature Preserves Commission, Illinois Groundwater Consortium, Illinois Environmental Protection Trust Fund Commission, World Wildlife Fund, Aquatic Resources Center (College Grove, TN), Great Smoky Mountains National Park, Discover Life In America, Inc., Huron Mountain Wildlife Foundation, Nachusa Grasslands, and the Integrated Taxonomic Information System.
Of course, the collection would not exist without the field collections and laboratory sample processing efforts of numerous scientists, technicians, extension personnel, and the lay public—over 200 people have contributed specimens to this collection, which grows by over 3,000 specimens each year. In particular, I thank Will K. Reeves for collecting specimens for our collection during his travels to remote areas of the globe, and several colleagues in the southeastern U.S., most of whom are perennial members of the Florida Association of Aquatic Biologists (formerly the Florida Association of Benthologists) for sharing new discoveries with me.
The scientific and administrative support staffs of the INHS also are instrumental in the continuing support and maintenance of this collection. In particular, I acknowledge the librarians of the University and departmental libraries of the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign Library System and former librarians of the Illinois Natural History Survey—their management of superlative research libraries as well as their ability to obtain even the most obscure distributional, ecological, taxonomic, and systematic papers has been instrumental in maintaining this as well as the other research collections housed at the Illinois Natural History Survey.
An important part of the INHS Annelida Collection is the extensive library of published papers and reprints (in paper and pdf formats) focusing on Annelida. This library of annelid literature is supported in part by my membership (since 1979) on the Literature Review Committee of the Society for Freshwater Science (for which I contribute an annual compilation of published literature focusing on the Annelida, and since May 2010, serve as committee chair). Current and past annual compilations (1959-1964, and 2003-2016) are available electronically. Annual bibliographies compiled by the Society’s Literature Review Committee for the years 1965 through 2002 have been scanned to PDF format and will be posted on the SFS website soon. I also acknowledge our colleagues around the world for regularly sending me reprints and pdfs of their papers focusing on the Annelida for inclusion in these annual bibliographic compilations. Of particular note is the October 1999 gift of reprints from Dr. Ralph O. Brinkhurst (Lebanon, TN) — papers he authored or co-authored during his exemplary career (30+ years) as a global annelid systematist and untiring mentor to countless understudies of oligochaete taxonomy, systematics, distribution, and ecology. You can gain some insight into Ralph’s career in his book (2004), entitled “Still Searching: The Autobiography of a Biologist” (Trafford Publishing; ISBN 1-4120-4303-4).