Type catalogue of amphibians in the Zoologische Staatssammlung München Frank Glaw & Michael Franzen Glaw, F. & M. Franzen (2006): Type catalogue of amphibians in the Zoologische Staatssammlung München. -Spixiana 29/2: 153-192 We provide a first complete list of the present and lost amphibian type specimens of the Zoologische Staatssammlung München (ZSM) and discuss various problems involved. The collection currently houses primary types of 61 taxa (45 holotypes, eight lectotypes, three neotypes, and five taxa based on syntype series), 41 of them currently considered as valid. Furthermore, 72 taxa are exclusively represented by secondary types (paratypes, paralectotypes), resulting in type material of 133 taxa. The ZSM collection strongly suffered from losses during World War IL Primary type specimens of approximately 65 amphibian taxa have been obviously destroyed during that time. The historical focus of the collection was South America and was primarily based on material collected by Spix and Martius during their expedition to Brazil from 1817 to 1820. 50 amphibian taxa are based on material collected during this expedi-tion, but currently specimens of only 14 taxa are still present in Munich. Subse-quently, herpetological research in South America was continued during the first half of the 20 th Century by L. Müller und W. Hellmich, who designated type mate-rial of 24 anuran taxa in the ZSM, 11 of them still represented by primary types. Recently, the focus of the taxonomic work on amphibians has shifted to Madagas-car. This has resulted in the presence of 19 holotypes and additional 50 taxa repre-sented by paratypes from that country. An extensive search in the herpetological collection resulted in the rediscovery of type material of Caecilia annulata Wagler, 1824 and Hyla lateristriga Spix, 1824, which formerly was presumed to be lost. Frank Glaw, Michael Franzen, Zoologische Staatssammlung, Münchhausenstr. 21, 81247 München, Germany; e-mail:
[email protected] Introduction The Zoologische Staatssammlung München (ZSM) is one of the major natural history museums in Germany. The first important herpetological collec-tions were obtained by an expedition of Johann Baptiste Ritter von Spix to Brazil during the years 1817-1820. A short history of the herpetological col-lection is given by Gruber (1992) and Glaw & Fuchs (2001). During World War II large parts of the collection including many type specimens have been destroyed. After the war there was significant uncertainty about the survival of the type specimens. This led to the Situation that several types were considered or as-sumed to be lost although being extant whereas other types considered present were actually lost (e. g. Frost 1985). In 1983 Hoogmoed & Gruber pub-lished a detailed catalogue of the type specimens of the Spix collection (species described by Spix and Wagler). This work removed much of the uncertain-ties which hindered the taxonomic research of Brazilan species. However, the types of the other amphibian and reptile taxa of the ZSM were never reviewed and their Status (extant or lost) remained unknown in many cases. In 1998, we therefore undertook a first attempt to clarify the Situation of the herpetological 153
Localities extracted from OCR text.
Specimen codes extracted from OCR text.
BioStor
