Old and Unreported Collections of Alpheid Shrimp from the Zoologisches Museum, Berlin, Principally from Melanesia

The dataset comes from a report on which previously unstudied collections of 70 species of alpheid shrimp held by the Zoologisches Museum (at the time of publication, East Berlin) are reported upon. Except for four species from the west coast of the Americas, all specimens were from the Indo-Pacific faunal realm, and principally came from the area of the Pacific south of the equator and west of the International Date Line known as Melanesia (exclusive of the Fiji Archipelago), with 46 species from this area. All of the German specimens were collected before 1914, but we have supplemented the records with six additional collections from Melanesia.During the time of this collection, between 1884 and 1919, the Zoological Museum played a central role in the collection and processing of natural history specimens from the German colonies. It organised expeditions and provided colonial officials and military personnel in Africa, the Pacific and China with guidelines and materials for collecting specimens. Natural history collecting served not only to scientifically document biodiversity, but was also frequently linked to economic and political interests.