Description
This dataset is a portion of the Scorpiones preserved specimens collection, part of the Arachnida collection of the National Museum of Namibia, Windhoek. The dataset contains 74 species, ten genera and four families, including 17 Namibian country records (for a species) published for the first time on GBIF. The specimens were collected mostly from Namibia, but also from Botswana, Angola, and South Africa, from 1957 to recent times, but excludes specimens collected in the last ten years. Important collectors include include EduVentures, T.L. Bird, E. & M. Griffin, J. Irish, E. Marais, M.-L. Penrith, and L. Prendini. Georeferenced coordinate precision was reduced for all species and most for sensitive species, but can be requested from the NMNW. Most of the records were manually checked within the collection at some point during the data-gathering processes.
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 3,567 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:
Prendini L, Bird T, Irish J, Becker F, Karuaera N (2023). National Museum of Namibia Scorpiones Collection Data 2022. Version 1.9. National Museum of Namibia. Occurrence dataset. https://cloud.gbif.org/africa/resource?r=nationalmuseumnamibiascorpiones2022&v=1.9
Rights
Researchers should respect the following rights statement:
The publisher and rights holder of this work is National Museum of Namibia. 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: 7a5d39ef-1abc-442f-be56-5ccf3b27aedd. National Museum of Namibia publishes this resource, and is itself registered in GBIF as a data publisher endorsed by GBIF Namibia.
Keywords
Occurrence; scoprpion; specimen; museum; Namibia; arachnid; arthropod; Occurrence; scoprpion; specimen; museum; Namibia; arachnid; arthropod
Contacts
- Content Provider ●
- Originator
http://orcid.org/0000-0001-8727-7106
- Content Provider ●
- Originator
- Content Provider ●
- Originator
- Metadata Provider ●
- Originator ●
- Processor ●
- Point Of Contact
- Custodian Steward ●
- Originator ●
- Point Of Contact
- Curator
Geographic Coverage
Namibia, Botswana, Angola, South Africa
| Bounding Coordinates | South West [-38.823, 4.219], North East [-2.811, 45] |
|---|
Taxonomic Coverage
Scorpions from four families (Bothriuridae; Buthidae; Hormuridae; Scorpionidae)
| Order | Scorpionidae (Scorpions) |
|---|
Temporal Coverage
| Start Date / End Date | 1957-04-20 / 2009-05-17 |
|---|
Project Data
Despite its aridity, Namibia contains a surprisingly high number of species and level of endemism (about 20 per cent). For the majority of species, little or no digital occurrence data is available. This project is geared towards improving available biodiversity information from two national institutions—the National Museum of Namibia (NMN) and the National Botanical Research Institute (NBRI)—together driving the establishment of a GBIF node in Namibia. The project further aims to improve the use and relevance of biodiversity data from GBIF throughout the country, particularly for biodiversity conservation and management, policy implementation, research, and other pertinent national development goals. The project will create and strengthen collaboration among research institutes, development practitioners, and policy-makers within Namibia, particularly around the gathering and use of biodiversity data. The overall impacts will include increased availability and use of biodiversity data, which can be measured directly in the number of records published through GBIF and the number of use-cases recorded. This, in turn, will improve implementation of conservation and sustainable development goals, measurable in the number of decision-making use cases of the published data. Another major impact will be the increased awareness of GBIF open data within Namibia, improving the drive towards both general and targeted data-contributions from local institutions, and increased data-use. This will be measurable in the number of institutions taking part in stakeholder engagement workshops, and those having adopted data policies or committed to publishing data to GBIF. The long-term impacts of the available data on these broader goals may not be easily measurable within the project period, but can be projected based on the number of stakeholders reached through the project engagement.
| Title | Mobilizing collections while improving open data engagement in Namibia |
|---|---|
| Identifier | BID-AF2020-099-NAC |
| Funding | JRS Biodiversity Foundation provided the main funding for assembling the dataset; GBIF BID Africa provided the funding to finalize and publish the dataset; the Ministry of Education, Arts and Culture and the Ministry of Environment contributed staff and resources to the production of this dataset. |
| Study Area Description | Namibia; southern Africa |
| Design Description | This is not a project gathering new data - data from the national scorpion collection was digitized, verified, cleaned, and published. |
The personnel involved in the project:
- Custodian Steward
- Content Provider
Sampling Methods
Data was digitized from specimen labels and field notes, into various fields relevant for the Museum and associated researchers. Species identifications were confirmed or assigned for the first time by various specialists, for a large portion of the specimens. Lorenzo Prendini compiled the first dataset and confirmed or added identifications to most of the records. John Irish georeferenced most records and re-checked data. The data was then migrated into a Specify Database. The dataset was then exported, and Francois Becker formatted the data for DarwinCore, cleaned and standardized all data fields. Locality data was either entered from quarter degree grid references from the labels, and/or georeferenced from a database of locality names for Namibia; some were interpreted based on locality descriptions from labels; some were confirmed from querying the original collectors. Selected fields were then mapped to DarwinCore standard terms - in some cases one field was split into multiple fields. Each field was cleaned, reformatted and standardized in Excel using various filtering functions and pivot tables. Taxonomic names were checked on a case-by-case basis using various online sources and expert input. A sensitive species list was compiled with expert consultation, and the necessary adjustments were made to the precision of coordinate data reported.
| Study Extent | Sample collecting during various field trips throughout Namibia and some surrounding southern African countries. |
|---|---|
| Quality Control | Standardization, consistency, and formatting was based on recommended DarwinCore standards, and was carried out in Excel. Taxonomy and nomenclature were manually confirmed. |
Method step description:
- 1. Collation of specimens from various sub-collections into single collection, and assignment of one standardized set of catalogue numbers 2. Data-entry from labels, confirmation or assignment of identifications per specimen 3. Geo-referencing, first round of data standardization/confirmation by checking problem records, confirming data from labels etc. 4. Formatting and cleaning of entered data for first museum Specify database 5. Data export from Specify and integration with original data import spreadsheet; data mapping to DarwinCore fields, standardization of terms, and second round of cleaning and error-checking.
Collection Data
| Collection Name | Arachnology |
|---|---|
| Collection Identifier | https://www.gbif.org/grscicoll/collection/d7083bfd-389d-4b2d-8c92-80a44a35c95a |
| Parent Collection Identifier | Not Applicable |
| Specimen preservation methods | Alcohol |
|---|
Additional Metadata
| Alternative Identifiers | 7a5d39ef-1abc-442f-be56-5ccf3b27aedd |
|---|---|
| https://cloud.gbif.org/africa/resource?r=nationalmuseumnamibiascorpiones2022 |