Museum Witt

The Museum Witt ( MWM ) is a zoological research facility in Munich. Together with the Zoological State Collection Munich this has the world's largest collection of " spinner -like " moths.

History

The museum was founded in 1980 by Dipl.- Kfm. Thomas J. Witt founded private interest for butterflies. Witt comes from a family of entrepreneurs; his ancestors were the founders of the shipping house Witt Weiden.

Collection

The collection contains the inventory of the Zoological State Collection Munich nearly 10 million butterflies and is the world 's most extensive collection of moths dar. The museum's Witt was built in 1962 by the intensive collecting activity of Lepidopterologen Thomas Witt.

In 2000, a contract between Thomas J. Witt and the Directorate General of the Zoological State Collection Munich was signed with the aim of securing the continued existence of the museum and the collection permanently. The Museum Witt thus received the status of a department of the Zoological State Collection Munich. The Museum Witt brought in the new union a 2.5 and 3 million butterflies, the Zoological State Collection Munich 7 million butterflies. The Bavarian State Minister for Science Hans Zehetmair was present during the formation of the collection network.

The museum supports worldwide research activities and promotes the stay of visiting researchers. In addition to the facilities at the Zoological State Collection Munich the old building of the Museum Witt continues to be used in the Tengstraße in Munich- Schwabing. The museum's collection Witt is housed in more than 20,000 insect boxes. It consists of some 50 collections of deceased Lepidopterologen that have been integrated into a main collection, which are the so-called " Proinsecta system" in boxes equipped with a specially developed for this purpose by Witt and patented plastic box system. In addition, Witt several 100 expeditions to that, longer -member research team first organized in many different states of the former Soviet Union to the Far East, and later to Iran, Afghanistan, North India, Nepal, Burma, Thailand, Vietnam, Taiwan in the almost entire indoaustralische islands to New Guinea. Expeditions to North Africa from Morocco to Egypt on the border of Sudan, in the Hoggar massif in the middle of the Sahara to the Arabian Peninsula completed the exploration of the Palaearctic Faunengebietes. Since the early 1990s, this expedition activity has been extended to the tropical African continent to South Africa and South America.

The " neotropical " moths, so the existence of the South American continent, is supervised volunteer of the Thomas family and Brigitte Greifenstein Streitdorf at Oberpfaffenhofen, now for over 15 years and expanded. The House of Greifenstein family has evolved into a meeting place neotropisch interested entomologists from home and abroad.

In the research activity of a large number of visiting researchers whose fixed to the trunk currently has 30 international scientists, a stock of about 25,000 microscopic preparations has been established.

For publication of research results was in 1981 together with Maximilian Schwarz, Linz, Counsel for Science of the Government of Upper Austria, founded the journal " Entomofauna ", which has since been regularly every year appears with a circumference of at least 500 pages and with universities and entomological institutions turn out to give specialized bodies, is by exchange.

In 2013 was founded by Witt in collaboration with the University of Vilnius, Lithuania, the series "Proceedings of the Museum Witt, Munich ", can be found in the extensive research results in book form.

In collaboration with Dr. Günter Müller, University of Tel Aviv, the MWM is also involved increasingly in international projects to study the malaria mosquito.

A library of several thousand volumes of reference books and a widely published after complete collection of 480 journals and over 20,000 reprints available to guest researchers. The stock is now available online worldwide via internet and iphone, but is only available to the visiting researchers interlibrary loan available. A public library lending is expressly excluded.

Thomas J. Witt was honored in 2001 with the Ritter -von- Spix - Medal of the Zoological State Collection Munich as donors. He was honored for his services on 22 November 2013 by the Dean of the Ludwig- Maximilians- University in Munich, titled Dr. hc rer. nat. excellent.