Wageningen Nematode Collection (acronym: WaNeCo) belongs to one of the largest repositories for nematode slides in Europe. It includes a searchable type specimens collection and nomenclatorial database. Also a large regular slide collection is present. 

The type slide collection includes name-bearing nematode slides (holo- and paratypes) and is hosted by the Plant Protection Service, Wageningen, The Netherlands, in cooperation with Wageningen University. WaNeCo maintains nearly 3.600 accessions of types originating from terrestrial, freshwater and marine habitats world-wide, excluding parasites of higher Animalia. Via the “type” button you can easily search within the type collection. These types are mostly used for scientific taxonomical studies and available upon request. The unique WT numbers refers to “Wageningen Type” numbers, and are available for authors when depositing types in the WaNeCo collection.

The nomenclatorial database is based on a former card system of about 25.000 cards of nominal taxa and synonyms. These cards have been digitalized and include per taxon information on: scientific nematode name, author(s), year of publication, journal were taxon was published, synonyms and bibliography. New data, not included on the original cards, on type locality and where types have been deposited, will be added.  

The regular slide collection includes about 50.000 slides, representing about 200.000 individual identified nematodes. The major part of this collection is focussed on terrestrial nematodes from Europe. It is used for teaching, identification and taxonomical studies. This part of the collection is not yet searchable on-line.

 

Curators: Prof. dr. Gerrit Karssen and MSc Evelyn van Heese.

Early taxonomical workers on nematodes in the Netherlands:

Dr. J.G. de Man (1850-1930) 

• Nematoda & Crustacea taxonomist
• Described 8 families, 61 genera & 239 species of nematodes.
• His private collection deposited after his dead at University of Amsterdam.
• Bibliography: Karssen (2006) Life and work of Dr. Johannes Govertus de Man (1850-1930), A Crustacea and Nematoda specialist. Brill, Leiden, The Netherlands.

Prof. Dr. J. Ritzema Bos (1850-1928) 

• Phytopathologist & 1st director Plant Protection Service, The Netherlands.
• Taxonomy of plant-parasitic nematodes: o.a. description of Aphelenchoides fragariae.

Prof. Dr. J.H. Schuurmans Stekhoven Jr (1892-1958)

• Parasitologist at Utrecht University.
• Founder (in 1956) of the journal Nematologica.
• Co-author of the book “Manual of Agricultural Helminthology”
• Taxonomy of free-living marine and animal parasitic nematodes.

 

Wageningen Nematode Collection:

Prof. Dr. Ir. M. Oostenbrink (1921-1979)

• All round nematologist.
• Started in 1950 with a permanent slide collection at the Plant Protection Service.
• Deposited in 1953 the first type slides (Paratylenchus goodeyi) in this collection.
• Moved in 1958 to Wageningen University.

Drs. P.A.A. Loof (1925- )

• In 1955 appointed as nematode taxonomist at the Plant Protection Service.
• Moved in 1958, with the slide collection, to Wageningen University.
• First curator of the Nematode Collection of Wageningen University (NCWU).
• Developed a unique nomenclatorial card system.
• Described 180 new nematode taxa, published 185 papers on nematode taxonomy.
• Retired in 1988.

Dr. Ir. A.M.T. Bongers (1946- )

• Nematologist and taxonomist at Wageningen University.
• Second curator of the Nematode Collection of Wageningen University (NCWU).
• Developed the Maturity Index.
• Retired in 2007.

Contributors

• Tom Bongers (initialized the digitalizing of the nomenclatorial card system).
• Jan van der Linde (scanning card system and editing electronic cards).
• Evert Wiesenekker, Wiesweb Application Development (WAD), developed the site and maintains it.

Frequently Asked Questions

• Why does the site not use all of the browser space available?
  We have to take care of the fact that most screens are smaller than the current monitors (like iPad's) and so on. In the future we will support adaptive rendering, this is a new technology which adapts to the device being used.
• What kind of privacy information is stored on this site?
  We store of course the email address & password of registered users. For anonymous users we only store the taxon they last searched for.
• Why does the site not work on my mobile device?
  At the moment there are a lot of mobile devices running on different operating systems. Because they all have their own specific HTML implementation we cannot guarantee the site is running on every device. In the future we plan to write an App running on Apple mobile devices.
• How can I create a hyperlink to a taxon or type species?
  Example genus 'Meloidogyne': http://www.waneco.eu/search/index/meloidogyne
  Example type species 'Alaimus depressus': http://www.waneco.eu/types/index/alaimus depressus
• Does the site expose socalled REST services I can use?
  At the moment we expose a search service (more will follow):
  URL: http://www.waneco.eu/service/search
  JSON parameters: "wildcard", "take" & "skip"
  NOTE: (take, skip) are used for paging, so if take=25 and skip=10, means 'give me 25 taxon cards, skipping the first 10'