Diptera: flies, mosquitoes and midges

The Diptera collection contains some 300,000 specimens of more than 7,000 species. Most of the specimens are pinned, but there also is a large alcohol collection, mostly Tipulidae and Limoniidae. The holdings include the following important specialist collections: Phoridae (H. Schmitz, E. Beyer, E. Baumann, H. Ulrich), Tipuloidea (B. Mannheims, H. Mendl), Blephariceridae (B. Mannheims, S. Kitakami), and Sciaridae (F. Lengersdorf — on a long term loan to F. Menzel from the Deutsches Entomologisches Institut, Müncheberg). The ZFMK collection of Diptera also holds a large part of the material collected in Fujian (China) by J.F. Klapperich. Furthermore, the collection houses the largest fossil collection in amber dedicated to Dolichopodidae in the world (H. Ulrich).

Besides the dried, pinned specimens, a rich and large collection in alcohol is housed at ZFMK, mostly for Tipulidae and Limoniidae (B. Mannheims). The Diptera collection is rich in type material with more than 1,320 types, from which 780 are holotype specimens. The Phoridae collection of Schmitz and Beyer contain 452 and 152 types respectively.

The collections are focused primarily on the western Palaearctic Region, but important parts of the collections originated from the Oriental, Neotropical and Afrotropical Regions. The collection of the Cologne Zoo is also housed here, as well as the collection of the former Fuhlrott Museum in Wuppertal.

The digitization of the collection is currently underway using 2D-barcodes with human and machine-readable parts. The software ‘Diversity Workbench’ is used to integrate all the information from the collection, as well as from the Biobank and other molecular sources, and to make this information available via GBIF.