Database and digitization of bees from TIGER project (Thailand)

Study Extent

Sampling

Method steps

1. The first step is to sort out bee specimens from all "cocktail" insect specimens deposited at QSBG. We primarily perform the preliminary identification by our bee taxonomists, gathering all bee specimens back to the Natural History Museum of Chulalongkorn University (CUNHM).
2. The next two processes can be divided into two steps similar to the previous "Database and digitization of bees in Thailand" project (doi.10.15468/tf4ejd). For specimens identification, all bees specimens were identified under stereomicroscopes by our resident bee taxonomists. The identification were carefully made to the lowest taxonomic rank as possible and also compare to the credited references such as research publications (mostly to seek out the revision or the original descriptions), webtools (e.g. Discoverlife, iNaturalist, buggide, idtools, and GBIF), and museum data portal such as data.nhm.ac.uk for type specimens examinations. The original label records were extracted by our technical staff and initially placed into spreadsheet, especially for old and damaged labels with obscure handwriting records (all label photos were digitized as backup). The extracted data were then filled out on their relevance DwC terms in the spreadsheet. This spreadsheet will be used for data validation, especially for spelling and locality information, which were later subjected to data cleaning using Microsoft Excel 2019 and OpenRefine v.3.4.
3. For the photo digitization processes, four standard microphotograph were produced: the original label, face, dorsal, and lateral habitus. Most of the specimens digitization were made on Canon 7D markII and Canon EOS 90D mounted on the Zeiss Stemi 508 and Zeiss Discovery V.8 stereomicroscope, whereas others were conducted on other configurations but in similar concept.

1. Apoidea
   rank: superfamily