Home to one of the largest and most diverse systematics collections in the country with over 9 million specimens and to world-class field stations, the Biodiversity Center provides scientists with opportunities to interact with and learn from millions of preserved specimens, living organisms and ecosystems. Within the Center, you’ll find:

• Biodiversity Collections featuring large and diverse groups of organisms from Texas and around the world:

  • The collections include fish, amphibians, reptiles, insects, cave arthropods, and birds and mammals;

  • They include an herbarium with more than a million specimens of plants—collected from around the world, including the largest such collection of Texas plants anywhere and specimens dating back to the 1760s.

  • Also included are specimens in the genetic resources collection, which houses samples and extracted DNA from specimens elsewhere in the collections.
    
    
    

• Our Field Stations featuring rich opportunities for students and scientists at the: 

  • Brackenridge Field Laboratory consists of areas of rich natural vegetation which include a native bluestem prairie, old pasture land, former quarry, Firefly Meadow, Pecan Bottoms, and juniper woodlands.

  • Stengl Lost Pines Biological Station has pine oak woodlands and savanna and is located outside of Austin in a classic rural field station setting.