KZNM-PINDIP-DIPTATEACH

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Description

The Entomology Collection represents the largest collection in the Natural Science Department of the KwaZulu-Natal Museum.The collection's geographic focus is South Africa with additional Afrotropical and Global material. The taxon dimension of the collection is flies and the geographic dimension of those flies is predominantly from South Africa. The collection is an actively developing collection and some of the research on the collection includes the PINDIP (Pollinator Information Network for Two-Winged Insects) (link to: https://www.pindip.org/) project, research on forensic dipterology and the ongoing research on robberfly taxonomy. 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 dataset from the KwaZulu-Natal Museum comprises approximately 30 000 specimens of pollinating fly, predominantly from the Afrotropics, and is a key output for this project.

DIPTATEACH is a network project that aims to enhance open-access data set on the Syrphidae of South Africa in the KwaZulu-Natal Museum (KZNM) Diptera collection.

The dataset contains occurrence records for flies of the families Bombyliidae, Calliphoridae, Mythicomyiidae, Nemestrinidae, Rhiniidae and Syrphidae, as well as the subfamily Pangoniinae (Tabanidae). All associated specimens are housed at the KwaZulu-Natal Museum Entomology Collection.

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