Amphibia collection of the Museu Nacional de História Natural e da Ciência, Universidade de Lisboa, Portugal

Description

The Amphibia collection of the Museu Nacional de História Natural e da Ciência, Universidade de Lisboa, Portugal, comprises about 980 accessions, corresponding to about 3500 specimens. The majority of the specimens were collected and entered in the collection in 1980s and 1990s, after the catastrophic fire that destroyed almost all the zoological collections of the former Museu Bocage in 1978. The majority of the specimens (largely Portuguese fauna) came from field works and studies by researcher and students from the Faculty of Sciences of the University of Lisbon, Portugal. Other material refers to donations from other European, South American and North American institutions. Recent field work in Africa is starting new collections from the former Portuguese colonies of São Tomé e Príncipe and Mozambique. A considerable collection of the invasive African clawed frog (Xenopus laevis Daudin, 1803) constitutes the largest series of the collection, comprising almost one third of the collection. Despite being small, the amphibians collection of the Museu Nacional de História Natural e da Ciência, Universidade de Lisboa, Portugal, is the largest in the country, and one of the largest in the world, regarding Portuguese amphibian fauna.