Arachnomorpha collection of the Royal Museum for Central Africa

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).