NHM Praque visited GBOL Bonn

End of October a delegation of the National History Museum Prague visited our GBOL project at Museum Koenig Bonn. Michal Tkoč, a flat-footed flies (Platypezidae) specialist and curator of Diptera, and scarab beetle (Scarabaeidae) specialist Dominik Vondráček are responsible for the entomology part of the recent Czech Barcoding Campaign. The project is funded by a grant of the Czech Ministry of Culture named “NAKI” (supporting of applied research and development focused on national identity and cultural heritage) DG16P02B038: “A methodology for the determination of zoological collection specimens on the basis of DNA analysis and the management of tissue samples collection”.

Granted with 600 000 € the project will focus mainly on different families of beetles and flies till the end of 2019 as well as on the members of other insect orders (e.g. Lepidoptera, Hymenoptera) and also vertebrates and other non-insect invertebrates. Special focus will be dedicated to species distributed in the Czech Republic and Middle Europe since these represent the most important and culturally valuable part of local collections. Additional goal is using barcode sequences to resolve determination and taxonomical problems as well as identification of new species from different groups of insect which are in the scope of their colleagues in National History Museum Prague.

During their two-day stay they got first hand insights of our established work-flows, policies, labor routines and technical equipment. Experts of the GBOL team showed all stations from the sample, over generating the barcode, ending in long-term storage as well as the scenes behind. Fruitful discussions illustrated optimization potential in the planned project.

We wish our Czech colleagues a good start with barcoding and looking forward to our collaboration!