As part of the German Global Biodiversity Information Facility program [www.gbif.org] the FoCol-project focuses on ant collections in Germany and their primary type specimens. All types are characterised in detail in the following way: original name, author and year of description, citation, currently recognised taxonomical status, type locality, collection date and collector, digital photos of the pin and labels and of frontal, lateral and dorsal views of the ants. For the digital photos a high-resolution camera and the software package AutoMontage® is used to produce a series of in-focus images from which a single image with extended focus is calculated. The database will be finished by the end of 2007 and will include then about 3000 entries of some 1500 type taxa and more then 17.000 photos. All data including the photos will be available via the GBIF portal using the internet database SysTax. This allows a rapid type examination that makes travelling to museums or mailing of types in many cases unnecessary, thus reducing budgets and time requirements for taxonomic investigations. By reducing physical handling, the database also will help to conserve the types for the future.

Progress in ant taxonomy is still hampered by lack of easy access via internet to well documented and researchable museum collections including their type specimens. German natural history museums hold a number of medium-sized collections of international importance (e.g. coll. Roger, Seifert, Stitz, Viehmeyer, part of Forel etc.). However, only incomplete information about ant collections in Germany exists [Brandão, C.R.F. 2000. In: Agosti, D. et al. (eds.) Ants – Standard methods for measuring and monitoring biodiversity, Washington, pp. 172-185; www.zalf.de/home_zalf/institute/dei/dei/digientinfo/index.htm] and only few type catalogues of ants in German museums have been published [e.g. Frankfurt: www.senckenberg.de; München: www.zsm.mwn.de/wiss_start.htm]. In this context, the FoCol-project as part of the German Global Biodiversity Information Facility program [www.gbif.org] aims to registry all institutional ant collections in Germany and their primary type specimens.

Scientific literature was screened to get information on ant types in Germany, and all relevant scientific institutions in Germany and some private persons were contacted and visited if types were present. All primary type material and important paratypes (for example of castes that differ from the holotype) were characterised by their original name, author and year of description, citation, currently recognised taxonomical status, collection date and collector, digital images of pin situation, original labels and descriptions, high resolution digital photos in frontal, lateral and dorsal view.

Fig. 1. Photography laboratory at SMNK with the described hardware.

For the digital photos a high-resolution camera (JVC KY-F70B) at a Leica Z6 APO stereo-microscope (Fig. 1) and the software package AutoMontage® [http://www.syncroscopy.com] was used to produce a series of in-focus images from which a single image with extended focus is calculated. The result outclasses simple digital photos in sharpness and details (Fig. 8-10) and consumes only a fraction of time necessary to produce the same quality manually from serial focus images with conventional graphical software. AutoMontage® is now increasingly used by myrmecologists to depict their objects and to build up image databases in the internet [Klingenberg, C. & Verhaagh, M. 2005: Myrmecology in the internet: Possibilities of information gathering. Beitr. Ent. 55 (2): 485-498.]. All extended focus images were post-processed with Adobe Photoshop© or Corel Photopaint© to improve the result. For details of the standard procedure developed at the SMNK see Riedel, A. 2005: Digital imaging of beetles (Coleoptera) and other three-dimensional insects. pp. 222-250 in: Häuser, C.L., Steiner, A., Holstein, J. & Scoble, M.J. (eds.) Digital imaging of biological type specimens – a manual of best practice. Stuttgart, viii + 309 pp.

All data were administered in a FileMaker Advanced 7.0© database or FileMaker Developer 8.0©, respectively (Fig. 2-7).

383 literature sources were analysed. The most important information resources for the project were: