One of the main pillars of research at the Royal Museum for Central Africa (RMCA) lies in its studies on arachnology. These have been conducted continuously for over half a century (since 1964) by the successive heads of the Non-insect Invertebrates section, P. L. G. Benoit and R. Jocqué, as well as by the researchers under their direction. RMCA arachnologists have described over 700 species, and a vast number of spider types, more than 5800, preserved in the museum’s collections originate from their work and that of numerous collaborators worldwide.

Focusing primarily on Afrotropical spiders, the RMCA collection represents a truly unique reference, and undoubtedly the most important in the world for this fauna. It is also among the largest fully digitized spider collections: nearly 97000 arachnid records (plus an additional 29000 records for mites) are encoded and georeferenced, representing a total of more than 321000 specimens (approximately 456800 including mites).

The outstanding quality of the collection and its ease of use, all specimens being sorted to the morphospecies level, identified at least to family, and entered in the section’s database, attract hundreds of visiting specialists from around the world each year. Numerous specimen loans are also regularly sent to research institutions abroad.

GBIF url: https://www.gbif.org/dataset/8da1b266-12b0-4606-a6a4-664f09d28376
Homepage: https://darwinweb.africamuseum.be/
Citation: Van den Spiegel D, Henrard A, Theeten F, Musschoot T (2025). Arachnomorpha collection of the Royal Museum for Central Africa. Royal Museum for Central Africa, Belgium. Occurrence dataset https://doi.org/10.15468/ehmc5q accessed via GBIF.org on 2025-10-28.