Continuing the success of a previous BIFA grant, this project is focused on digitizing the butterfly collection at the Bogor Zoology Museum (MZB) in Indonesia, currently estimated to hold 58,000 specimens.
Exceeding their targets in 2019 with more than 9,700 specimens digitized and published to GBIF, the project team aims to mobilize another 9,300 specimens belonging to the Pieridae and Riodinidae families as well as select type specimens.
Identification of specimens will be done in collaboration with experts at Kyushu University Museum, Japan, the Museum für Naturkunde in Berlin, Germany, and Naturalis Biodiversity Center in Leiden, Netherlands. To further leverage the experiences gained and attract more participation, the project team will also publish a manual on data mobilization of butterfly collections and records.
Project progress
During the first part of the project, the project lead participated virtually in the GBIF Asia Virtual Summit held in July 2020 presenting the project, then later in November 2020 at the 2020 ECN (Entomological Collections Network) Virtual Meeting giving the presentation "Working on data mobilization of butterfly collections at Museum Zoologicum Bogoriense, Indonesia, supported by BIFA-GBIF, during the COVID-19 pandemic".
In September 2021, having adapted the format of their workshop from in-person to online, the project team then held the Workshop on Data Recording and Mobilization of Indonesian Butterfly Data. Attended by 60 participants, the workshop had a great success of receiving about 1,000 butterfly photographs taken from various locations in Indonesia, which can be uploaded to GBIF as observation record of occurrence spatially and temporally.
Despite the COVID-19 pandemic and the project team having to make adjustments to the project’s implementation from the start of the project, it has been able to progress with its work and by final reporting had documented in numerous datasets over 9,800 specimens of the family Pieridae, Riodinidae and butterfly type specimens deposited at the insect collection room of Museum Zoologi Bogor.
Post project the team intends to complete the print outs of specimen data as a catalog. Also a draft of a manual book, on data mobilization of MZB butterfly collection.
In addition to this, and due to the workshop only being held at the end of the project, the team will also continue to process the butterfly photographs submitted by the butterfly enthusiasts and prepare to upload to GBIF.
Post project activities
In December 2021 the paper Citizen Science Participation to Accelerate Butterfly Data Acquisition in
Indonesia Related to BIFA-GBIF Project was published in the Berita Biologi 20(3) (Indonesian). See here for an English translation.
