Biodiversity processing HUB™

Biodiversity Processing HUB™

Natural history museums such as the Zoological Research Museum Alexander Koenig play a crucial role in documenting the world's biodiversity and serve as a long-term archive of this evidence for the scientific community and the public. Currently, research institutions are faced with the task of overcoming the taxonomic obstacle to link the required species-level information to (three-level) taxa in a spatio-temporal context (Wheeler et al. 2004). This is essential to understand the distribution and turnover of species and to derive conservation measures. Furthermore, the rapid and irreversible loss of biodiversity around the world is forcing museums to document the remaining global biodiversity as quickly as possible before it becomes extinct.

Today, it takes an average of 21 years from the collection of a specimen to its scientific description, which provides a species name (Fontaine et al. 2012). On the one hand, this massive backlog is due to the fact that the few remaining taxonomists are overloaded with a large amount of unsorted identification material. On the other hand, the heavy workload prevents up-to-date pre-sorting of bulk samples by the museums' technical staff in order to make this material accessible and attractive to (external) taxonomists.
How can this current biodiversity dilemma be overcome and the availability of material with undescribed diversity be accelerated?
- Teach practical biodiversity courses at Bachelor's and Master's level
- Offer internships and theses focussing on arthropod diversity
- Involve exchange students and volunteers

With this concentrated manpower & expertise, we transform this unmanageable raw soup into accessible units that are attractive to the few remaining taxonomists.

Currently, two programmes funded by the BMBF (link is external) funded projects (CaBOL (link is external) & GBOL III (link is external)) are using the facilities to rapidly process their extensive arthropod material collected in the Caucasus and Germany.

Become a member
Would you like to join our team and learn more about Caucasian and German arthropod diversity? We can offer internships and would be happy to talk to you about possible thesis topics. Get in contact with us

Make a donation
Would you like to support our approach financially? Please contact us at
We can provide you with a donation receipt...

Courses that have been held
- Winter semester 2022/2023:
WBIO-C-10Biodiversity Research: from 09.01.2023 to 03.02.2023 [Biology Bachelor 10SWS]

- Winter semester 2021/2022:
WBIO-C-10Biodiversity Research: from 22 November 2021 to 17 December 2021 [6 Biology Bachelor 10SWS]

- Winter semester 2020/2021
WBIO-C-E2Biodiversity research: from 30 November 2020 to 23 December 2020 [5 Biology B.Sc. students 10 SWS]
641041001 Biodiversity: from 22 March 2021 to 26 March 2021 [14 Geography B.Sc. students 1 SWS]

References
- Fontaine, B.; Perrard, A. & Bouchet, P. (2012): Twenty-one years of shelf-life between discovery and description of a new species. Current biology 22(22): R943-R944. DOI: 10.1016/j.cub.2012.10.029

- Wheeler, Q.D.; Raven, P.H. & Wilson, E.O. (2004): Taxonomy: hindrance or expediency? Science 303(5656): 285. DOI: 10.1126/science.303.5656.285