The Importance and Potential Value of a Regional Midsize Arthropod Collection: An Example of IBULC

Abstract

During the last three centuries, people involved in natural history sciences have produced thousands of natural history collections worldwide. Specimens have been used for scientific proof of various discoveries and for gaining new knowledge in many disciplines of science not only in the area of biodiversity but also in taxonomy, species biology and ecology, parasitology, evolution, organisms' responses to climate change, nature conservation and many other biological sub-disciplines. Despite never-ending financial struggles, the world's largest collections as well as many regional midsize collections contain billions of specimens. This provides an enormous database for present and future studies. This article presents a critical description of the material of the Institute of Biology, University of Latvia collection (IBULC) containing roughly 59,000 identified arthropod individuals of about 3,700 species, including twenty-eight primary types as a part of around ninety type specimens, to illustrate the importance of midsize regional natural history collections in detail.

Immediate Effects of Prescribed Burning on Soil Mite (Acari: Oribatida) Communities in a Scots Pine (Pinus Sylvestris) Forest, Latvia

“…Slides were kept in a thermostat oven Memmert GmbH 100-800 for two weeks at + 50°C for hardening the media and achieving optically clearer observations under the light microscope (100-650× magnification) (Krantz and Walter, 2009). Identification was done using an identification key (Weigmann, 2006) and the IBULC specimen collection (Kagainis et al, 2020). This collection covers the largest part of the species recorded in the territory of Latvia.…”