Patricia Mergen, Michel Louette, Jos Snoeks, Marc de Meyer & Danny Meirte
Department of Zoology, Royal Museum for Central Africa. Leuvensesteenweg 13, B-3080 Tervuren, Belgium
The Royal Museum for Central Africa (RMCA) is holding collections of about 10 million animal specimens, originating from the whole of the Afrotropical region.
The RMCA has in recent years actively collaborated in biodiversity information projects. The collections “Xylarium” (tropical woods) and “Prelude” (medicinal plants) of its Metafro Infosys project were in 2003 among the first Belgian collections presented to the GBIF network with the help of the Belgian GBIF node. RMCA is the leading partner of two feasibility studies funded by the European Network of Biodiversity Information (ENBI, work package 13), namely “True Fruit Flies of the Afrotropical Region” and “Albertine Rift databases”. It is a member of the FishBase Consortium which assists researchers and fisheries agents gaining access via the Internet to old and new literature on African fish, fisheries and aquaculture. The RMCA has broadened its activities in the field of access provision and training by setting up the Africa Biodiversity Information Centre (ABIC), which covers all the zoological groups represented in its collection.
The museum is associated with CETAF activities and it is a member of the Be-TAF consortium. Through these networks it is involved in recent projects of the EU’s 6th Framework Programme like SYNTHESYS and EDIT. The RMCA is also an active collaborator of the Belgian GNOSIS project (Generalized Natural Sciences Online and Spatial Information System) based among other things on a decentralized solution and on Open GIS Standards.
This poster will present the activities of the RMCA in the field of biodiversity informatics and show how the active participation of the institution in these various initiatives was, and still is beneficial both for the Museum and for its various stakeholders.