Collections
The Science Museum of the University of Navarra has a collection of more than 1,000 specimens of rocks, minerals and fossils. The specimens come mainly from donations from the Colegio de Nuestra Señora del Buen Consejo de Lekaroz (rocks, minerals and fossils) and from the personal collection of Mr Manuel Martel, consisting mainly of minerals of great beauty and size.
The collection also has some examples of the most abundant fossils in the surrounding mountains, as well as examples of extinct groups such as trilobites and
ammonites.
The Museum has numerous pieces of antique laboratory and pharmaceutical instruments on display. A visit to the display cases allows us to see different containers with spices, microscopes, linoscopes, flasks, test tubes and beakers -among others-, as well as other documents and books that have been donated for exhibition. The Museum also has an old 19th century pharmacy that belonged to Marcos Usía, an apothecary from Llodio (Álava), and was donated in 1973 by his family.
Vertebrates usually occupy a predominant place in any Natural History Museum. Naturalised mammals, birds and reptiles form the basis of the exhibition and some groups serve to explain phenomena of adaptation, evolution and phylogenetic relationships. Several hundred specimens and species can be found among the display cases in the Science building, some from exotic locations although most are European species. Iberian species of reptiles and amphibians are well represented (with between 60 and 80% of the species cited in the peninsula) and a large representation of mammals and birds. The research funds in this group are mainly focused on freshwater fish species and micromammals (rodents and insectivores) of which there is an extensive record (temporal and geographical) of the Navarrese territory and which include all the Iberian species of this group.
The origin of the Herbarium of the University of Navarra dates back to the arrival of Professor T.M. Losa España in 1964 at the university. A year later, Dr. M.L. López began her doctoral thesis, maintaining her contributions to the herbarium uninterruptedly for several decades. In 1970 the herbarium was registered in the Index Herbariorum under the acronym PAMP. He is currently an institutional member of the Asociación de Herbarios Ibero-Macaronesicos (AHIM).
Most of the material deposited in the herbarium comes from collections made by researchers from the Department of Botany of the University of Navarra, as a result of theses, dissertations and various research projects generally carried out in the territory of the Autonomous Community of Navarra. The herbarium houses several collections organised by taxonomic groups: fungi, lichens, bryophytes and vascular plants. The vascular plant collection is the largest and contains approximately 100,000 specimens, of which nearly 50,000 are computerised and more than 40,000 are published in GBIF.
Non-insect invertebrates make up the largest part of the Museum's collection, at least in terms of the number of specimens and species housed there. Among other groups, hundreds of thousands of specimens of nematodes, annelids, molluscs and, above all, arachnids (spiders and mites) and springtails, are deposited and conserved in the Museum's facilities. Decades of research dedicated to different aspects of the ecology of our soils have given rise to this extensive collection which includes more than 250 type series (new species for science). The usual size of these animals (in the order of a millimetre) makes it very difficult to exhibit them to the public and they remain in the collection at the disposal of researchers on request.
Insects are the other large group of invertebrates, numerous in number of specimens and species, which can be found in the Museum's collections. Among the insects in the collections, one group of particular beauty and diversity stands out: the Lepidoptera. This group, which includes butterflies and moths, has a large representation of tropical specimens thanks to donations received. Some of the largest species in the world can be seen in the exhibition and others are surprisingly colourful. Local butterfly species have also been the subject of various research projects and, together with other insects, contribute several type series to the collection.