Biodiversity research is an outstanding issue in modern biological sciences. Knowledge of how many species live on our planet and where they primarily occur remains an everlasting question. It is now known that the tropical rainforests are not necessarily the regions that exhibit the highest number of species overall and that there are lower numbers of endemic species than in the 25 currently recognised biodiversity hotspots. These hotspots are based on numbers of endemic species of angiosperm plants and vertebrate taxa, but these regions might actually not correspond to areas of high endemism of invertebrate taxa. To be able to answer the important question "Do great numbers of endemic invertebrate taxa occur in biodiversity hotspots?" we will show how specimen data from taxonomic revisions have the potential to bring us a great step closer to the answer. Species of robber flies (Diptera: Asilidae) distributed in the Afrotropical Region will be analysed as an example. There are many modern taxonomic revisions, including specimen data, i.e. locality or date of collection, available for this taxon in Africa and there are a number of biodiversity hotspots found in continental Africa and adjacent islands. Species richness estimation techniques are used to estimate the number of uncollected species. These estimates can either be based on the entire fauna or focused on only a restricted region, e.g. a biodiversity hotspot or national park. Species endemism of Asilidae in two biodiversity hotspots lying in western South Africa, i.e. the Cape Floristic Province and Succulent Karoo, is evaluated.
Species 1: Diptera Asilidae (robber fly)
Keywords: taxonomic revisions, species richness
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