The beetle collection of the Zoologisches Forschungsmuseum A. Koenig (ZFMK) comprises about two million specimens and includes a number of larger and smaller collections. Among the more important are the "Rheinland" collection founded by F. Rüschkamp and extended by the AG Rheinischer Koleopterologen (Wagner 2007), the collection of myrmeco- and termitophile beetles of A. Reichensperger (or at least a part of it - although mentioned in Horn et al. (1990) that it was destroyed during World War II), and a part of the collection R. Oberthür, acquired by the Museum in 1956. Moreover, the collection has grown by expeditions of museum's staff, such as those of H. Roer, who was for long time (1963-1991) curator of Coleoptera (Schmitt 2003), and of J. Klapperich, employed as Coleoptera technician from 1935 to 1952 at the museum (Lucht 1988). Klapperich collected during this time much in Fujian (China) and other regions and after his membership to the institute the museum acquired still much of his material (e.g. from Afghanistan). Consequently, many other museums house material of Klapperich, e.g. the National Museum in Prague, the Hungarian Natural History Museum, Budapest and the Staatliche Museum für Naturkunde, Karlsruhe. After Klapperich's death 1987 the rest of the material of Klapperich collection was bought by the Staatliches Museum für Naturkunde, Stuttgart (Schmitt 2007). In the recent years additional material has been accumulated from research projects in Eastern Africa mainly through the activities of T. Wagner.
There have been previously a few contributions on part of beetle types at the ZFMK (Degallier 1993; Lampe et al. 2007), however, the collections and their type specimens are still insufficiently explored, especially those of the collection R. Oberthür. Therefore, now major focus is on an overall digitisation of the collection to enhance fast retrievability of specimens, but also to fascilitate the exploration of the status of type specimens through an external collaboration with the international community of taxonomic specialists for the respective taxa under question. The present paper is a first attempt towards this objective. However, a number of supposed type specimens had to be omitted from the current checklist of types since they have not been retrieved in the collection although included in a former unpublished list of "types" by H. Roer, or their status as type specimen was recognised as doubtful. [adopted from Ulmen et al. 2010]
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