The Mistletoe Marble, Marsh Mallow, Belted Beauty, Slate Sober, Fiery Clearwing – sound like names for Christmas cocktails over the festive period? What about Ghost, Goat, Blood-vein, The Sprawler…more like something from the Nightmare before Christmas?
These are just some of the curious names for unusual moths and beetles that are included in Amgueddfa Cymru – National Museum Wales’ new online catalogue of rare and endangered British species of conservation concern to be found in its collections!
Created by Amgueddfa Cymru’s Department of Biodiversity and Systematic Biology, members of the public will be able to search the Catalogue of Rare and Endangered Species (CoRE Species) http://naturalhistory.museumwales.ac.uk/corespecies/ which includes thousands of rare animals, plants and fungi. The catalogue is part of the department’s work in researching and identifying species contributing to global biodiversity knowledge and making its internationally important collections available to scientists now and in the future.
Peter Howlett, Curator (Vertebrate Zoology) at National Museum Cardiff, said, “We hold a vast number of British specimens of species of conservation concern in our collections here at Amgueddfa Cymru and we’ve now made them accessible online with this catalogue. I’m sure it will be a useful tool for researchers, academics and scientists as well as the general public who want to find out more.
“The work of the taxonomists in the department in identifying and naming species is crucially important. Their expertise helps improve our knowledge of global biodiversity and our biological collections are used by taxonomists all over the world as well as in Amgueddfa Cymru.”
