The "Taxonomic Checklist of Dung beetles (Coleoptera: Scarabaeidae: Scarabaeinae) in Sabah, Malaysia" has been published onto the Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF) portal. This is the first of several datasets that will be published as part of our GBIF Project on ' Mobilising data on ecologically important insects in Malaysia and Singapore' funded by the Biodiversity Information Fund for Asia (BIFA).
This taxonomic checklist provides documentation of all described dung beetle species in Sabah, Malaysia and will be updated as new species are described. Currently, it contains a total of 192 records consisting of 154 accepted species and 38 synonyms. Biodiversity data found within this taxonomic checklist were obtained from published taxonomic papers, ecological papers and published datasets containing occurrence records for dung beetles in Sabah, Malaysia.
Each record not only contains the species name derived from literature, but also in-depth higher taxonomic classifications (e.g., genus, subgenus), authorship, taxonomic status, taxon rank, accepted names and original names. References of when the species name was first established along with the authoritative taxonomic reference are also given for each record.
This taxonomic checklist is open-access and made freely available for all [(CC-BY-NC) 4.0] to build capacity among regional stakeholders to prepare for a future in academic research and citizen science where dung beetles are easily identifiable and will be widely encouraged for use as bioindicators and for other ecological studies. This dataset can be downloaded on the project page.
This dataset was prepared by Marx Yim (Project Officer), Ong Xin Rui (PhD student) and Eleanor Slade (Project Investigator).