The Collection
The Natural History Collections in general are increasingly confronted with the need to house voucher samples from environmental studies and ecological surveys. This material is often not prepared according Natural History Collections standards and the organisms are not determined on genus or species level. In general such type of material comes from inventory projects of university working groups, from national and regional nature conservation authorities and agencies as well as from individual persons temporarily employed for time-limited inventory projects. The Staatliche Naturwissenschaftliche Sammlungen Bayerns with the Zoologische Staatssammlung München might accept the duty to preserve such reference samples in cases where certain scientific and curatorial criteria are fulfilled prior to the access.
The more than 28,000 environmental specimens associated to the Arthropodia Varia Section at the ZSM are mainly deposited in their original context, i. e. in the vials of original capture. They have been collected in southern Germany (Bayern, Baden-Württemberg and Hessen) and are very useful reference vouchers with taxa determined by specialists often up to species level. Making available this data will enable an easier check-up of the identifications published by the inventory projects. The curation of voucher specimens from large inventories and the mobilization for the ZSM with transfer of selected voucher material of rare species into special vials is done by Dr. Jörg Spelda in cooperation with the curator of the Arthropodia Varia Section of the ZSM, Prof. Dr. Roland Melzer and the collection manager Stefan Friedrich. This procedure ensures that future specialists have appropriate access to the material for scientific work.
"The Environmental Sample Collection of the Arthropoda Varia Section" currently comprises of thousands and thousands of single specimens in several thousand vials. They are housed in more than hundred containers.
Data Project and Service
The data collection "The Environmental Sample Collection of the Arthropoda Varia Section"
includes about 28,000 records mainly on centipedes (Chilopoda), millipedes (Diplopoda)
and Arachnida (harvestmen (Opiliones), spiders (Araneae) and pseudoscorpions (Pseudoscorpiones))
but also records on taxa such as woodlice (Isopoda Oniscoidea). Taxonomy follows
several central European checklists, which are often based on worldwide catalogs, e.g.
The World Spider Catalog
by Norman I. Platnick for Spiders.
The data collection "The Environmental Sample Collection of the Arthropoda Varia Section" is made available through the Diversity Workbench platform. The data is maintained and expanded by Dr. Jörg Spelda, data cleaning and material labeling has been done with the assistance of Natalie Bäumler, Tobias Maier and Sebastian Swoboda (temporary staff). Notices of errors of any kind are much appreciated by the editorial staff.
Technical support is provided by the IT Center of the Staatliche Naturwissenschaftliche Sammlungen Bayerns with the German GBIF Node for Invertebrates II.
The Database "The Environmental Sample Collection of the Arthropoda Varia Section at the Zoologische Staatssammlung München" and – if not stated otherwise – its supporting files have been copyrighted © 2013–2024 by the Zoologische Staatssammlung München.
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