Southeast Asian and Australasian Herpetological Collections from the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries in the Zoological Museum of Berlin

Abstract

The Zoological Museum in Berlin (Museum fur Naturkunde) houses one of the most extensive herpetological collections in Europe. Important material from Southeast Asia and especially the Indo-Australian Archipelago accumulated steadily following the museum’s founding in 1810. The earliest parts of the collection, stemming from the natural history cabinets of Marcus Elieser Bloch, Friedrich Heinrich Graf von Borcke and others, are represented by eighteenth century material, mostly without specific locality. Throughout the early decades of the nineteenth century amphibians and reptiles reached Berlin from a number of collectors, both German and foreign. The most important of these were Fedor Jagor and Eduard von Martens, both contemporaries of Alfred Russel Wallace. Additional important material was obtained by exchange or purchase from museums and natural history dealers from across Europe. Among approximately 625 specimens from Southeast Asia catalogued into the Zoological Museum before about 1870 are specimens representing types of at least 44 nominal species of amphibians and reptiles. The majority of these were described by Wilhelm Peters, director of the Zoological Museum, whose later collaboration with Giacomo Doria in Genoa further strengthened the collection through the addition of many specimens from Sarawak. Berlin Southeast Asian collectors and localities are reviewed and the identity and status of confirmed and putative type material from the region is evaluated.