In the early days of June, Tropical Ecology and Entomology (TEE) Lab member Marx Yim (Project Officer) travelled to Forest Research Centre (FRC) in Sepilok, the R&D division of the Sabah Forestry Department. He was there to hold meetings with senior researcher Dr. Arthur Chung about our GBIF project "Mobilising data on ecologically important insects in Malaysia and Singapore" funded by the Biodiversity Fund for Asia (BIFA) and to determine the efforts necessary to integrate their dung beetle collection into our datasets.
Engagement
Accompanied by Dr. Arthur Chung, he gave a tour of the amazing entomology collection that was on display at FRC Sepilok. He also shared a wealth of knowledge about the function of FRC and its main research focuses in present day. This was followed by a closed-door meeting where we discussed progress and ongoing processes of the project. The meeting also involved understanding the resources available at FRC and how it can be utilised effectively for the project.
On one of the days, Marx Yim was invited to speak in a seminar that was open to all FRC staff and researchers. He spoke about our GBIF project "Mobilising data on ecologically important insects in Malaysia and Singapore" where he shared more about the objectives, function and application of GBIF and also about our project in-depth. This was followed by a Q&A session where queries regarding best practices for digitisation workflows, tools used in our project and how to publish on GBIF were discussed.
FRC Entomological Collection
Over the course of the visit, several trips were made to the FRC insect collection to examine their dung beetle collection to understand what is required prior to integrating them into our project. This included examining the type of data that is available for each specimen, creating a simple catalogue of their collection and also obtaining datasets both online and offline. Several interesting morphospecies were observed and they will be very useful in determining accurate species IDs for further additions and revisions to our Taxonomic Checklist of Sabah Dung Beetles in the future.
We are extremely grateful for our collaborator, FRC and Dr. Arthur Chung for providing access to the FRC Entomological collection and for allowing us to speak to everyone. Thank you for hosting our visit.