The islands had been little explored or surveyed before the 1883 catastrophe-only two pre-1883 biological collections are known: one of plant specimens and the other part of a shell collection.

During his journeys he faced financial difficulties as he received no sponsorship, but he was still able to grant 60,000 items to the biological collections of the Hungarian National Museum, including 300 new animal species.

These biological collections together form one of the largest assemblages of the Americas with nearly 8 million items.

The museum's main collections are biological collections, only a small geological collection is stored and displayed.

Its biological collections contains 50,000 specimens of 4,000 species of organisms and can be divided into 2 groups which are botanical collections (PSU Herbarium) and zoological collections.

As a result of naturalists and explorers sending back biological collections, Regel was able to describe and name many previously unknown species from frontiers around the world.

The Association of Systematics Collections (ASC) was "an international, non-profit organization of institutions that maintain biological collections."

Subsequently Whitney sponsored the extensive Whitney South Seas Expedition, which lasted from 1921 to 1932, making biological and anthropological collections through Micronesia, Polynesia and Melanesia.

The most comprehensive biological collections were obtained at this time.

The Illinois Natural History Survey biological collections include insects, crustaceans, molluscs, annelids, reptiles and amphibians, birds, mammals, algae, bryophytes, fungi, and vascular plants.