National Museum of Namibia Scorpiones Collection Data 2022

Study Extent

Sample collecting during various field trips throughout Namibia and some surrounding southern African countries.

Sampling

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.

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 steps

1. 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.

Scorpions from four families (Bothriuridae; Buthidae; Hormuridae; Scorpionidae)

1. Scorpionidae
   common name: Scorpions rank: order

Namibia, Botswana, Angola, South Africa