Ninety percent of all living things are animals without backbones, so pervasive and abundant they have been called “The little organisms that make the world go ‘round.”  Such groups as insects, arachnids, crustaceans, worms, starfish, protozoans, and mollusks are all invertebrates.  Even the largest museums do not attempt to collect and study them all, and VMNH has to be selective in its research priorities. The fauna of Virginia logically takes first place, for despite its rank among the most biodiverse states in the country, the study of our invertebrates has been very deficient and current emphasis must be placed on such basic procedures as inventories simply to discover what species occur in Virginia.  We emphasis freshwater insects and mollusks, as their habitats are the most jeopardized, and the faunas of forest litter (beetles, myriapods, spiders), which are important in the formation of new organic soil. The classification and distribution of millipeds worldwide is a second area of interest. The VMNH reference collection, ranked among the ten best in the world, fuels ongoing inhouse research, and is consulted by investigators from the United States and many foreign countries. Dissemination of new knowledge is accomplished by publication in many international journals as well as in two museum series, “The Insects of Virginia” and “Myriapodologica.”

	•	DR. RICHARD HOFFMAN: Director of Research and Collections, Curator of Recent Invertebrates			•	RECENT INVERTEBRATES NEWS