Dragonfly biodiversity 90 years ago in an Alpine region: The Odonata historical collection of the MUSE (Trento, Italy).

Abstract

BackgroundHistorical collections of natural science museums play a fundamental role in documenting environmental changes and patterns of biodiversity transformation. This considered, they should have a pivotal role to plan conservation and management actions.The MUSE - Science Museum of Trento is an Italian regional museum preserving about 5.5 million items (organised in 297 collections). About one million of them are invertebrates, 70% of which are of local origin, gathered in the collection "Miscellanea Invertebrati". Odonata account for a minor part of this collection; however, most of them are of local or regional relevance. A complete catalogue of this collection does not exist to date.New informationThe collection was studied in 2017-2018 and this contribution aims to present the Catalogue of the historic collection of Odonata of the MUSE - Museo delle Scienze of Trento (Italy).In all, 836 specimens of adult dragonflies and damselflies are found in the collection referring to an overall 56 species. The collection covers a period between 1924 and 1957 and refer to 74 defined localities, all located in northern Italy (most of them in Trentino - Alto Adige Region).The samples conserved in the collection are, for several species, the only indisputable confirmation of their former occurrence in that region.