RBINS Bird collection
Citation
Royal Belgian Institute of Natural Sciences: RBINS Bird collection https://doi.org/10.15468/4gzrjh accessed via GBIF.org on 2025-06-21.Description
The RBINS bird collection is made up of around 132,000 specimens. It includes a significant collection of skeletons and eggs as well as type material for 123 species. It is one of the institute's oldest collections and for much of the historical material, including the tropical birds, we owe our thanks to ornithologist Bernard du Bus de Gisignies, the first director of the Museum of Natural Sciences in 1848. Alphonse Dubois, who was appointed curator of the vertebrate collections in 1869, was the first to describe many of De Gisignies’ specimens. In the 1930s Zoologist René Verheyen added a great deal of material to the ornithological collections and in particular, an exceptionally large collection of Belgian and Central African fauna.
Taxonomic Coverages
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Avesrank: class
Geographic Coverages
Worldwide
Bibliographic Citations
Contacts
Olivier Pauwelsoriginator
position: Curator
Royal Belgian Institute for Natural Sciences - Department of Scientific Heritage Service
Vautierstraat 29
Brussels
1000
BE
Thomas Vandenberghe
metadata author
position: Data manager
Royal Belgian Institute for Natural Sciences
Vautierstraat 29
Brussels
1000
BE
email: tvandenberghe@naturalsciences.be
userId: http://orcid.org/0000-0002-9269-6548
Stijn Cooleman
metadata author
position: Biodiversity Data Officer
Belgian Biodiversity Platform
BE
email: s.cooleman@biodiversity.be
userId: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3029-0451
Patrick Semal
administrative point of contact
position: Head of Scientific Heritage
Royal Belgian Institute for Natural Sciences
Vautierstraat 29
Brussels
1000
BE
email: psemal@naturalsciences.be
userId: http://orcid.org/0000-0002-4048-7728
Jean-Marc Herpers
custodian steward
position: Curator of digital data
Royal Belgian Institute for Natural Sciences
Brussels
BE
email: jmherpers@naturalsciences.be
Franck Theeten
programmer
position: Database manager
Royal Museum for Central Africa
BE
email: franck.theeten@africamuseum.be
userId: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0626-538X
administrative point of contact
Biodiversity and Ecological Data and Information Centre - Royal Belgian Institute for Natural Sciences
Vautierstraat 29
Brussels
1000
BE
email: info@bedic.be