Zoological collections as a source of information about the state and changes of fauna, communities, and populations

A brief overview of possibilities for analysis of fauna composition on the basis of small and large zoological collections, in particular collections in zoological museums of universities and zoological departments of natural history museums of various academies, mainly of the NAS of Ukraine. Among the analysed research areas are: 1) analysis of the portion of species in collections, 2) formation of maps of species distribution, 3) analysis of changes in the portion of species over time, 4) analysis of changes in species distribution over time, 5) study of morphological variability of species, including inrapopulation and geographic, 6) analysis of the age-sex structure of the samples, 7) accumulation of information about rare species. All these and similar areas of analysis are not only provided by the mere existence of collections, but in some cases are possible only because of the existence of collections.