The data of the Swedish Malaise Trap Project, a countrywide inventory of Sweden's insect fauna.

Background: Despite Sweden's strong entomological tradition, large portions of its insect fauna remain poorly known. As part of the Swedish Taxonomy Initiative, launched in 2002 to document all multi-cellular species occurring in the country, the first taxonomically-broad inventory of the country's insect fauna was initiated, the Swedish Malaise Trap Project (SMTP). In total, 73 Malaise traps were deployed at 55 localities representing a wide range of habitats across the country.

Completing Linnaeus's inventory of the Swedish insect fauna: Only 5,000 species left?

Despite more than 250 years of taxonomic research, we still have only a vague idea about the true size and composition of the faunas and floras of the planet. Many biodiversity inventories provide limited insight because they focus on a small taxonomic subsample or a tiny geographic area. Here, we report on the size and composition of the Swedish insect fauna, thought to represent roughly half of the diversity of multicellular life in one of the largest European countries.

The Swedish Malaise Trap Project: A 15 Year Retrospective on a Countrywide Insect Inventory.

The Swedish Malaise Trap Project (SMTP) is one of the most ambitious insect inventories ever attempted. The project was designed to target poorly known insect groups across a diverse range of habitats in Sweden. The field campaign involved the deployment of 73 Malaise traps at 55 localities across the country for three years (2003-2006).

Biodiversity assessments in the 21st century: the potential of insect traps to complement environmental samples for estimating eukaryotic and prokaryotic diversity using high-throughput DNA metabarcoding .

The rapid loss of biodiversity, coupled with difficulties in species identification, call for innovative approaches to assess biodiversity. Insects make up a substantial proportion of extant diversity and play fundamental roles in any given ecosystem. To complement morphological species identification, new techniques such as metabarcoding make it possible to quantify insect diversity and insect-ecosystem interactions through DNA sequencing.

Skeletal morphology of Opius dissitus and Biosteres carbonarius (Hymenoptera: Braconidae), with a discussion of terminology.

The Braconidae, a family of parasitic wasps, constitute a major taxonomic challenge with an estimated diversity of 40,000 to 120,000 species worldwide, only 18,000 of which have been described to date. The skeletal morphology of braconids is still not adequately understood and the terminology is partly idiosyncratic, despite the fact that anatomical features form the basis for most taxonomic work on the group. To help address this problem, we describe the external skeletal morphology of Opius dissitus Muesebeck 1963 and Biosteres carbonarius Nees 1834, two diverse representatives of one of the least known and most diverse braconid subfamilies, the Opiinae.