Senckenberg is home to Germany’s largest natural history collection. These “archives of nature” form the basis of our research.
For research and service facilities, this means that they are also open to external users. In our management and development of our scientific collections, we adhere to the Code of Ethics for Natural History Museums issued by the International Council of Museums (ICOM).
Senckenberg is part of national and international networks and consortia, including NFDI, OSIRIS, GBIF, OBIS, CETAF and DiSSCo. Close collaboration with partner institutions and the integration of new technologies strengthen the centre’s long-term position in biodiversity-related research.
Senckenberg continuously invests in the expansion of modern laboratory infrastructure with a focus on next-generation sequencing (NGS), imaging, and mass spectrometry.
The laboratories are organized across locations and are partly operated in cooperation with universities – for example, the stable isotope laboratory is run jointly with Goethe University Frankfurt.
Central platforms such as the data and modeling center and LOEWE-TBG support efficient data management and methodological development.
The data catalog provides an overview of the type, context, and archiving of data generated by research units of the Senckenberg Society for Nature Research (SGN).
The Search.Senckenberg search portal provides access to the collection objects available at Senckenberg, including those from the central collection data management system (currently SeSam).
Several institutions throughout Germany have joined our SeSam system. These links lead directly to their collection data:
The Senckenberg Museum of Natural History in Görlitz operates the Edaphobase soil biodiversity data warehouse, which brings together existing primary taxonomic data on soil organisms from collections, scientific literature, reports, etc. from many institutions and individuals researching this topic.
Herbarium Senckenbergianum
The botanical and mycological collections of the Senckenberg Society for Nature Research
Index Collectorum Herbarii Senckenbergiani (FR)
The collectors represented in the Frankfurt Herbarium
The Virtual Herbarium of the Flora of Germany provides an overview of Germany’s flora with high-resolution scans of herbarium specimens. It includes native and naturalized taxa as well as selected transient taxa.
The portal Bestimmungskritische Taxa zur Flora von Deutschland
offers information and illustrations (high-resolution scans of validated herbarium specimens) of these difficult-to-identify plant species.
Chromosomenzahlen zur Flora von Deutschland
provides information on the karyology of native plants.
Die Flora von Frankfurt am Main
provides information on plant diversity in urban areas (including distribution, ecology, and history).
African Plants – A Photo Guide
An interactive photo guide to the vascular plants of Africa (excluding Madagascar)
West African Plants – A Photo Guide
An interactive photo guide to the vascular plants of West Africa
East African Plants – A Photo Guide
An interactive photo guide to the vascular plants of East Africa
Central African Plants – A Photo Guide
An interactive photo guide to the vascular plants of Central Africa
West African Vegetation – A vegetation data network
Vegetation data from West Africa
The West African Data & Metadata Repository
makes the data from the UNDESERT project available.
MARSAMM – Historical collections of marine organisms – a window into the beginnings of global change in the North Sea and Baltic Sea
Documentation of changes in fauna in the North Sea and Baltic Sea since the mid-19th century based on the collections of marine organisms at the Zoological Museum of Christian Albrecht University (CAU) in cooperation with the collections of the Senckenberg Research Institutes and Natural History Museums in Frankfurt and Dresden and the museums of the NORe-Verbund e. V.
The project is funded by the BMBF as part of the initiative “Networking – Developing – Researching. Alliance for University Collections.”
Collection of the Arachnida (arachnids) section of the Senckenberg Museum of Natural History in Görlitz.(Spinnentiere) des Senckenberg Museum für Naturkunde Görlitz.
Virmisco – The Virtual Microscope Slide Collection (page in English)
offers virtual access to collections, esp. type material. Loans might become obsolete in many cases, conserving material from damage and loss.
Wildkatzendatenbank
As part of the “Wildkatzensprung” project, funded by the Federal Agency for Nature Conservation with funds from the Biological Diversity Support Program, BUND and the Senckenberg Research Institute have been studying the distribution and migration patterns of wildcats throughout Germany since 2012.
Access to additional nationally licensed databases and collections via DBIS