Digitisation of the harvestmen of the BOS Arthropod Collection (University of Oviedo, Spain)

Abstract

Verbatim: There are significant gaps in accessible knowledge about Iberian harvestmen (Arachnida: Opiliones), both in distribution and phenology. In this background, the digitisation of the biodiversity data associated to the harvestmen kept in the BOS Arthropod Collection of the University of Oviedo, Spain (hosted in the Department of Biología de Organismos y Sistemas) has two aims: (1) to provide a dataset with phenological and distribution harvestmen data from the North third of Iberian Peninsula, and (2) to describe this subcollection. Preservation status of harvestmen vials was reviewed and enhanced prior digitisation, specimens identified and sorted. A database with DarwinCorev1.2 standard fields and other specific fields of the research projects was developed, and imported to ZOORBAR v2.1.1 software. When geographic coordinates were lacking, the localities were sorted geographically for batch retrospective georeferencing. This collection hosted 16455 specimens, preserved in 3772 vials. Approximately 38% of the specimens belongs to the family Sclerosomatidae, and 26% to Phalangidae; other six families with fewer specimens are also included. The earliest specimen deposited in the collection dates back to early 20th Century, but the general collection starts in 1977, and most of the specimens were collected in 21st Century. The dataset includes records distributed for each month, in several cases stemming from repeated sampling in each locality; so they are useful to study phenology of this group in the area and differences with other regions. Quality control of data was incorporated in several steps of the digitisation process (validation and cleaning of geographic, taxonomic and additional data) before exporting the dataset and uploading to the IPT of the GBIF Spanish node. The complete dataset is provided in Darwin Core Archive format, and this is available from the IPT of the GBIF Spanish node, GBIF international dataportal and the BOS Arthropod collection webpage.