I am trying to get morphometric data on Ouachita map turtles from a particular river system and going from website to website is inefficient if there is a one-stop-shopping alternative online.
Hi Gregory,
There is currently iDigBio which aims to digitise collections around the globe. This is a work-in-progress and might be useful to you, it currently includes some of the bigger institutions particularly in the US.
I did a quick search of Graptemys ouachitensis which gave 7,252 records (includes subspecies) from over 15 institutions.
https://www.idigbio.org/portal/search
https://www.idigbio.org/
Greg... You can also try VertNet (http://www.vertnet.org/index.html).
VertNet has specimens listed for most of the bigger U.S. institutions. You can narrow searches by typing in genus and species, and then also adding something like the county (or even the name of the collector). Though some smaller collections or state collections (e.g., Mississippi Museum of Natural Science) are not patched in to the network.
However, if you are looking to get morphometric data, you will need to contact the museum collections manager. They may be able to take photographs with a scale bar (I've done this before) or they may be able to send them to you on loan. Sorry, but most collections don't have measurement data entered into any database.
I hope this helps.
Best,
Will
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