SIGNIFY

Data as a DwC-A file	download 388 records in English (26 KB) - Update frequency: continually
Metadata as an EML file	download in English (27 KB)
Metadata as an RTF file	download in English (13 KB)

Description

For over two centuries, naturalists have collected zoological specimens from Singapore and its surrounding waters, leading to extensive collections of its biodiversity housed in natural history museums worldwide. The SIGNIFY (Singapore in Global Natural History Museums Information Facility) project, an initiative of the Lee Kong Chian Natural History Museum (LKCNHM) at the National University of Singapore, endeavours to trace the footsteps of these specimens held in custodian institutions. Launched on 10 August 2022, the project aims to collate, document, digitise and make publicly available online scientifically and historically significant zoological specimens collected from Singapore since its founding in 1819. SIGNIFY is the first international endeavour at this scale to make the historical biodiversity data of an entire country freely available online. Working with counterparts from custodian institutions, the digital archive serves to bridge data gaps in the understanding of Singapore’s historical biodiversity.

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 388 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:

SIGNIFY, Lee Kong Chian Natural History Museum & Respective holding institution | World Museum, Liverpool (LIVCM): Board of Trustees of National Museums; © National Museums Liverpool | Naturalis Biodiversity Center (RMNH): Stichting Naturalis Biodiversity Center

Rights

Researchers should respect the following rights statement:

The publisher and rights holder of this work is Lee Kong Chian Natural History Museum, National University of Singapore. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (CC-BY-NC 4.0) License.

GBIF Registration

This resource has been registered with GBIF, and assigned the following GBIF UUID: deb38f6b-09e9-4ee2-8d0b-056bb6a1c6db. Lee Kong Chian Natural History Museum, National University of Singapore publishes this resource, and is itself registered in GBIF as a data publisher endorsed by Participant Node Managers Committee.

Keywords

Occurrence

Contacts

Lee Kong Chian Natural History Museum SIGNIFY

Originator ●
Point Of Contact

National University of Singapore

signify@nus.edu.sg

World Museum, Liverpool

Board of Trustees of National Museums
© National Museums Liverpool

https://www.liverpoolmuseums.org.uk/world-museum

Naturalis Biodiversity Center

Stichting Naturalis Biodiversity Center

https://www.naturalis.nl/en

Geographic Coverage

Singapore

Bounding Coordinates	South West [-90, -180], North East [90, 180]

Taxonomic Coverage

No Description available

Phylum	Arthropoda, Annelida, Chordata, Mollusca, Porifera, Chordata, Cnidaria
Class	Polychaeta, Arachnida, Aves, Reptilia, Bivalvia, Mammalia, Pycnogonida, Anthozoa, Merostomata, Gastropoda, Demospongiae, Actinopterygii, Insecta, Calcarea, Malacostraca
Order	Testudines, Scleractinia, Squamata, Decapoda, Hemiptera, Percopsiformes, Passeriformes, Pelecaniformes, Scleralcyonacea, Tetraodontiformes, Primates, Gruiformes, Sirenia, Blattodea, Xiphosura, Sabellida, Araneae, Lepidoptera, Gobiiformes, Diptera, Suberitida, Trochida, Trogoniformes, Neogastropoda, Cycloneritida, Clathrinida, Stomatopoda, Batrachoidiformes, Syngnathiformes, Cephalaspidea, Beloniformes, Pantopoda, Blenniiformes, Scorpaeniformes, Phasmatodea, Perciformes, Venerida, Leucosolenida, Malacalcyonacea, Mantodea, Falconiformes, Poecilosclerida, Centriscidae, Siluriformes, Coleoptera, Odonata, Columbiformes, Charadriiformes, Bucerotiformes, Ovalentaria incertae sedis, Hymenoptera, Psittaciformes, Caprimulgiformes, Sacoglossa, Strigiformes, Piciformes, Coraciiformes, Clupeiformes, Malacalcyonacea, Archaeogastropoda

Temporal Coverage

Start Date / End Date	1817-06-30 / 2012-03-17

Project Data

Singapore in Global Natural History Museums Information Facility

Title	SIGNIFY
Funding	The project receives generous support from Mr Terence Anthony McNeice (in honour of Sir Percy McNeice), the Lee Foundation and Mr Goh Geok Khim.
Study Area Description	Singapore

The personnel involved in the project:

SIGNIFY Team

Author

Sampling Methods

SIGNIFY digitises and documents scientifically and historically-important specimens from Singapore

Study Extent	This includes important type specimens, and historical specimens that were collected before the early 1900s and by prominent collectors.

Method step description:

Data-mining: This includes the extraction of specimen information from published literature and referring to online museum databases
Digitisation: This step requires the team to take high quality research-ready images of the specimens, with different views to capture important characteristics of the specimen
Image post-processing: This involves the cleaning of images through Adobe Photoshop, and plating the different views of each specimen onto a single figure plate

Collection Data

Collection Name	Animalia

Specimen preservation methods	Alcohol, Dried, Formalin, Mounted, Pinned, Microscopic preparation

Additional Metadata

Acknowledgements
Alternative Identifiers	deb38f6b-09e9-4ee2-8d0b-056bb6a1c6db
	https://cloud.gbif.org/asia/resource?r=signify