Madrid’s Museo Nacional de Ciencias Naturales (MNCN-CSIC) hosts Spain’s largest insect collection and coordinates INC-STEP. The Museu de Ciències Naturals de Barcelona (MCNB) and Faculty of Biological Sciences, Complutense University of Madrid (UCME) have vital roles in training for pollinator monitoring and conservation. The team at the Science Museum, University of Navarra are experts in identifying and filling gaps in biodiversity data. The Natural History Museum, University of Valencia act as a hub to extend our database across additional insect collections in Spain.

In the project we tested a workflow for creating a national reference collection, and evaluated the time and staff resources required. We also developed accessible tools and resources to help pollinator identification, all accessible through the Iberfauna portal of the Distributed Reference Collection.

INC-STEP was a satellite project of TETTRIs (Transforming European Taxonomy through Training, Research and Innovations), funded by the European Union’s Horizon Europe Research and Innovation program under Grant Agreement Nr. 101081903.