Zoological Museum of the Department of Biology

The Zoological Museum of the University of Patras was founded in 1968, as a result of the efforts of Professor I. Ondrias. Today, it operates under the auspices of the Department of Biology, specifically, the Section of Animal Biology. It is situated on the University campus of Rio, Patras and occupies part of the ground floor of the building, where the Department of Biology and the Department of Mathematics co-exist.

For more information about the Museum, visit the official website at: http://zmup.upatras.gr/en

The exhibition of the museum consists of more than 60 display cabinets that showcase a large number of mounted (or otherwise preserved) animals, representing mostly the Greek fauna. These offer visitors the opportunity to familiarise themselves with wild animals of our area and to obtain information about them.

The species in the exhibition are in their majority vertebrates, such as bony and cartilaginous fishes, amphibians, reptiles, birds and mammals. However, a number of cabinets also display invertebrate groups, such as sponges, corals, mollusks, earthworms, insects, crustaceans and echinoderms.

Display cabinets and dioramas of the museum have been carefully designed to represent various natural environments, in order for visitors to obtain a fair idea of how the animals would appear in them.

The scientific collections of the Museum consist of over 8000 specimens of vertebrate species. The collections can be freely accessed for research purposes by researchers, following relevant arrangements.

In 2018, the Museum begun to digitize its collections, in the framework of the research project “Ornithopolis”. This includes an electronic registry of the specimens in the collections, access to virtual specimens over the internet and focus on environmental education, via newly developed material on urban biodiversity.

Administration

Following the founding of the Zoological Museum, Prof. I. Ondrias became its first director until 1996. Since then, the Museum has been governed by a scientific committee, that has consisted over the years of the following members of the teaching staff of the Section of Animal Biology:

• Panagiotis Kaspiris (Professor, 1997 – 2008)
• Constantinos Stamatopoulos (Lecturer, 1997 – 2007)
• Evangelia Giagia-Athanasopoulou (Professor, 1997 – 2013)
• Stella Fraguedakis-Tsolis (Professor, 1997 – 2013)
• Basil Chondropoulos (Professor, 1997 – 2014)
• Sinos Giokas (Associate Professor, 2015 – )
• Marigoula Margariti (Associate Professor, 2015 -)
• Georgios Mitsainas (Lecturer, 2015 – )
• Evangelos Tzanatos (Assistant Professor, 2015 – )

Vision

The main objectives of the museum are the following:

• Display of many different mounted or preserved specimens from the Greek fauna.
• Provision of information on the exhibited animals and education on animals and life on Earth, in general.
• Raise of environmental awareness and provision of consultation on environmental protection.
• Maintenance and enrichment of scientific collections and utilisation of stored material for scientific studies.