Stalažs, A. 2021 Biruta Rasiņa’s collection of scale insects (Hemiptera: Sternorrhyncha: Coccomorpha) at the Latvian National Museum of Natural History, including type material of several species. Zootaxa 5039(4): 451–478
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Notes: Biruta Rasiņa, in collaboration with her colleagues, conducted the most extensive research on the scale insect fauna in Latvia in the 20th century. She was active in science from the 1940s until the early 1970s, and described eight new species between 1966 and 1971. Previously it was believed that the type material of the taxa she described, and all the other scale insect material she collected, had been lost. However, inspection of the material showed that it was in fact Biruta Rasiņa’s collection of scale insects, which contained both dry and ethanol-preserved material as well as microscope slides. The material has now been audited and registered in the museum’s collection. Most of the material was collected in Latvia, but the material also includes samples from other countries (Armenia, Belarus, Estonia, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Lithuania, Poland, Russian Federation and Ukraine).
