An annotated catalogue of the types of short-horned grasshoppers (Orthoptera, Caelifera) housed in the Zoological Museum Hamburg (ZMH)

Abstract

Zoological collections remain the main archive of animal life on earth, especially in times of mass extinctions. The most important animals of these collections are the type specimens, which represent the original reference for a species. While a full digitization of most museum collections currently remains utopic, lists of types are an essential resource for researchers to perform taxonomic revisions. Here, we provide an updated type catalogue of the short-horned grasshoppers (Caelifera) housed in the Zoological Museum of Hamburg (ZMH), now part of the Center for Natural History Hamburg (CeNak). This collection comprises 209 type specimens belonging to 128 species: 65 holotypes, three lectotypes, one syntype and a large number of paratypes. We also list topotypes of two species for reasons of completeness but note that they have no formal status. Overall, types of 13 species were added to the collection since the last catalogues in 1968 and 1977 and several corrections to the last catalogues were made. We provide a full bibliography for these species, aiming to provide a comprehensive taxonomic guide to this collection.