South Australian Museum – Australian Helminthological Collection

The Australian Helminthological Collection (AHC) of the South Australian Museum includes approximately 42,000 registered lots of helminths (e.g. nematodes, tapeworms, and other parasitic flatworms). Most helminths in the collection are from Australian native vertebrates, but there is material from Australian domestic and zoo animals, livestock and humans and from hosts collected overseas. Many of the worms in this collection were donated by one of Australia’s most famous parasitologists and zoologists, Professor T. Harvey Johnston. Some of Johnston’s specimens were collected when he travelled to Antarctica as Chief Zoologist with Sir Douglas Mawson in 1929 as part of the British, Australian and New Zealand Antarctic Research Expeditions.
Material is either kept in bottles of ethanol or mounted on microscope slides. The AHC is used frequently by researchers and students, nationally and internationally, for taxonomic and biodiversity studies.