The Bavarian State Collection of Zoology

The Bavarian State Collection of Zoology

Systematics is a basic biological discipline that investigates and describes the biodiversity on our planet. The science conducted at the Bavarian State Collection involves research on the taxonomy, phylogeny, and natural history of animals, and provides an adequate and sustainable depository for zoological specimens.

The ZSM is, with almost 22 million zoological objects (labels), one of the largest natural history collections in the world. Many of these specimens have been collected by staff and other collectors during the 200 year long history of the ZSM. One of our main aims is to protect the enormous biological information associated with each zoological object and to make this information available to the scientific and general public.

A major initiative of the ZSM is creating a genetic reference library of all, ca.  35,000 Bavarian animal species, to allow their accurate identification, including all life history stages (eggs, larvae or tissue samples). The project “Barcoding Fauna Bavarica thus opens a new era in Bavarian biodiversity research and faunistics.

Creating a DNA barcode library of Bavarian animal species

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