Description
Dataset comprises historical records from circa 1970 to 2019, focusing on Togo, Benin and Nigeria but with some additional material from further countries in tropical Africa. The biodiversity centre of the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture, Benin (IITA) houses together with the IFAN museum at Dakar, Senegal one of the largest collection of insects in West Africa. The geographic scope of the collection is mainly Benin, Nigeria and Togo with additional material from various countries in tropical Africa. It constitutes the largest non-plant biodiversity repository within all research centers of the Consultative Group of International Agricultural Research (CGIAR). The IITA insect collection includes to date more than 370,000 specimens and belongs to the few actives of its kind in the subregion. Roughly 6,000 species from 335 insect families have been identified from the sampled material, of which the Coleoptera and Lepidoptera build the most biodiverse orders with 2300 and 1200 identified species, respectively. On-going research on Diptera focusses mainly on Tephritidae but also on pollinating flies in the framework of a collaborative project (Pollinator Information Network for Two-Winged Insects (PINDIP)) (link to: https://www.pindip.org/) involving several Africa based taxonomic institutions and lead by the Royal Museum of Central Africa, Tervuren, Belgium.
Data Records
The data in this occurrence resource has been published as a Darwin Core Archive (DwC-A), which is a standardized format for sharing biodiversity data as a set of one or more data tables. The core data table contains 2,293 records.
This IPT archives the data and thus serves as the data repository. The data and resource metadata are available for download in the downloads section. The versions table lists other versions of the resource that have been made publicly available and allows tracking changes made to the resource over time.
Versions
The table below shows only published versions of the resource that are publicly accessible.
How to cite
Researchers should cite this work as follows:
Goergen G, Mboma P, Jordaens K (2020): The hoverfly collection (Diptera, Syrphidae) of the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (IITA) at Calavi (Benin). v1.1. Royal Museum for Central Africa, Belgium. Dataset/Occurrence. https://ipt.biodiversity.be/resource?r=rmca_iita&v=1.1
Rights
Researchers should respect the following rights statement:
The publisher and rights holder of this work is Royal Museum for Central Africa, Belgium. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution (CC-BY 4.0) License.
GBIF Registration
This resource has been registered with GBIF, and assigned the following GBIF UUID: 781747f1-ebab-4eb0-beaf-1f88b3cfd65d. Royal Museum for Central Africa, Belgium publishes this resource, and is itself registered in GBIF as a data publisher endorsed by Belgian Biodiversity Platform.
Keywords
Occurrence; Specimen
Contacts
- Originator
- Originator
- Metadata Provider ●
- Originator ●
- Point Of Contact
- User
Geographic Coverage
Africa
| Bounding Coordinates | South West [-90, -180], North East [90, 180] |
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Taxonomic Coverage
The collection covers the family Syrphidae.
| Family | Syrphidae |
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Temporal Coverage
| Start Date / End Date | 1970-05-01 / 2019-12-31 |
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Project Data
The PINDIP project, funded by the JRS Biodiversity Foundation, and headed by the Royal Museum for Central Africa (RCMA), will help redress that gap for sub-Saharan Africa, by partnering with museums in Africa to digitize and publish existing records on the group of insects known as Diptera (flies and mosquitoes), and increase the size and value of museum collections through field collections, and by documenting pollination interaction webs for the group. The Diptera families of interest are Bombyliidae, Calliphoridae, Mythicomyiidae, Nemestrinidae, Rhiniidae, Syrphidae and Tabanidae. The African institutions involved are: International Centre of Insect Physiology and Ecology (ICIPE, Nairobi, Kenya), National Museums of Kenya (NMK, Nairobi, Kenya), KwaZulu-Natal Museum (NMSA, Pietermaritzburg, South Africa), National Museum Bloemfontein (BMSA, Bloemfontein, South Africa), South African National Biodiversity Institute (SANBI, Pretoria, South Africa), and the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (IITA, Cotonou, Benin). The PINDIP project, funded by the JRS Biodiversity Foundation and hosted at the Royal Museum for Central Africa, includes mobilization of Afrotropical pollinating fly (Diptera) data as a primary output. The Syrphidae dataset from IITA comprises approximately 2.600 specimens, predominantly from on Togo, Benin and Nigeria, and is a key output for this project. All associated specimens are housed at IITA Biodiversity Centre, Cotonou, Benin.
| Title | PINDIP |
|---|---|
| Funding | JRS Biodiversity Foundation |
The personnel involved in the project:
Sampling Methods
Historical collection records, including various methods such as malaise traps, hand collecting etc.
| Study Extent | Dataset comprises historical records from circa 1970 to 2019, focusing on Togo, Benin and Nigeria but with some additional material from further countries in tropical Africa. |
|---|---|
| Quality Control | Historical specimens have been re-identified where possible. |
Method step description:
- 1.Data cleaning. 2.Taxon names were compared to the GBIF data using the species matching tool.
Additional Metadata
| Alternative Identifiers | 781747f1-ebab-4eb0-beaf-1f88b3cfd65d |
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| https://ipt.biodiversity.be/resource?r=rmca_iita |