Museum of Wildlife and Fish Biology

About Us

Under the guidance of the University of California Davis College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences and the Department of Wildlife, Fish, and Conservation Biology, the Museum of Wildlife and Fish Biology (MWFB) integrates vertebrate specimen-based research with technical services and education. With over 60,000 specimens and over 11,500 tissues, the MWFB houses one of the most significant, modern collections of birds, mammals, and fish in California, establishing the MWFB as a key facility addressing environmental issues such as wildlife conservation, endangered species recovery, native fish decline, landscape ecology, systematics, and biodiversity. The MWFB is accredited by the American Society of Mammalogists (2012), is a Registered CITES Institution (2011), maintains a USDA Biosafety Level 2 Lab certification (since 2010), and is an official California state repository (since 2010).

One of our primary goals is the education of undergraduate and graduate students at UC Davis. The MWFB collections and staff support 50 courses across ten different departments on campus, interacting with over 2,700 students annually. We also provide specimens in response to requests for use by researchers and educators both on and off campus. Access to such a complete collection (in terms of species coverage) offers opportunities to a wide array of users. Specimens are used for training in vertebrate identification and for species determinations by several agencies, including the California Department of Fish and Wildlife, California Department of Parks and Recreation, U. S. National Park Service, U. S. Forest Service, U. S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Yolo County National Audubon Society, and the Central Valley Bird Club. Use of MWFB specimens and services is expanding as requests increase from throughout North America. Demand by researchers is steady, with recent work involving species distributions, avian diseases, morphology, genetics, locomotion, flight evolution, and other disciplines. Numerous publications and reports have resulted from the use of MWFB specimens.

We are located on the University of California, Davis campus in the Department of Wildlife, Fish and Conservation Biology in the Academic Surge Building, room 1394. Click here for an interactive campus map or here for a PDF map to the MWFB.