The method of data presentation, physical-geographic areas and nomenclature used for the compilation of the catalogue

The present edition provides descriptions of twelve collections of birds and mammalians kept at the funds of the national University of Uzbekistan, the Institute of Zoology of Uzbek Academy of Sciences, the Republican Nature Museum, the Museum of the Department of Zoology at Samarkand State University, Samarkand Regional Museum of Local History, the Ecocenter Djeiran and Nuratau state nature reserve.

For each collection, information is presented on the basis of a standard scheme: a brief quantitative and qualitative profiling, the history of establishment, territorial-chronological distribution of collections, location and modern conditions of maintenance, contact addresses of keepers, systematic list of species in three languages (Latin, Russian and English), and a reference catalogue. The performance capability of the Microsoft Access significantly facilitated the territorial-chronological analysis and compilation of reference catalogues of the scientific funds.

The structure of the reference catalogue is borrowed from A.F. Kovshar and M.A. Kuzmina (1984). For each species, the number of all stored pieces, the number of males, females and individuals with the unidentified sex are indicated. Thse data are cited for the species in general, followed by those broken down by geographic areas. For instance, the record "Nycticorax nycticorax - 7 (4,3,0): 13 (1,0,0); 17 (0,2,0); 19 (3,1,0)" should be read as the following: 7 specimens availabe, of which males, 4; females, 3; individuals with unidentified sex, 0. After the collon, the information is provided by areas, in which these are assigned the following codes: 13 (south-eastern Turkmenistan) - 1 male (17 (Kyzylkums), 2 females; 19 (near-Tashkent flat-lands) - 3 males and 1 female.

The position of geographic regions used in the compilation of databases and reference catalogues of the collection

The codes of species correspond to the numeration of systematic lists compiled for each collection during the inventory. Therefore, these codes differ for one and the same species in different collections. The main predestination of the species codes is to facilitate the sorting and searching of species in electronic databases. The absence of some ordinal numbers in systematic lists is the result of the exclusion of species, which had been included in them erroneously, while fractional numbers (e.g. 72.5. Allactodipus bobrinskii Kolesnikov, 1937) are the result of the additions made to the list as a result of re-defining of the list or a previous omission.

Most of the specimens of the genus Microtus, which is under constant revisions, are included into the present catalogue under the names indicated in the author labels. Several independent species, which had been considered as subspecies or forms with the group of species Meles meles, Allactaga elater and Apodemus sylvaticus, have been currently isolated. In the catalogue, these species are indicated with letters s.l. standing for sensu lato, i.e. in the broad sense.

The map of N.A. Zarudny's travels (1899)

For the description of the geographic confinement of the collected materials the entire territory covered by collections was divided into 33 natural-geographic areas. This zoning is based on a system developed by O.V. Mitropolsky for the development of an inter-regional report "The birds of Central Asia. The codes, names and coverage of areas. This division is used mainly to provide users with an opportunity ro get a general idea about the geographic confinement of specific collections. For the compilation of the toponymic list and searches of old geographic names, publications by N.A. Zarudny (1908, 1917), E.L. Shestoperov (1929), S.K. Dal (1936, 1937), N.A. Bobrinsky (1940), R.N. Meklenburtsev (1953), A.N. Bogdanov (1956), A.V. Popov (1959), A.I. Ivanov (1969), as well as old maps of N.A. Zarudny kept at the collection of the National University of Uzbekistan were used.The specimens, in the labels of which no place of collection is indicated or the collection cannot be referred to a specific area, as well as specimens obtained from the zoological parks or nurseries are assigned the No 34 (unidentified place of collection).

During the taxonomic revision of birds and animals, the old names and phylogenetic status of species were brought in conformity with modern notions on the systematics of classes (Vaurie, 1959, 1965; Kartashev, 1974; Stepanyan, 1990, Koblik et al., 2006). In individual cases, the reports Die Vögel der paläarktischen Fauna (1912, 1921, 1922, 1923), the full reference books of birds of the USSR 1934, 1935, 1936, 1941), the Birds of the USSR (1951-1954) were used for the decoding of bird synonims. The following publications served as taxonomic guides for the processing of materials: The fauna of Uzbek SSR 1953), Mammalians in the fauna of the USSR (1963), A systematics of mammalians (1973, 1977, 1979), A brief reference guide of rodents (1984), A systematics of mammalians of the USSR (1987), The fauna of the world - Mammalians (1990), The fauna of the Republic of Tajikistan (1992). The English names of taxa was taken from the Dictionary of animals names in five languages (Sokolov, 1988; Beme, Flint, 1994), Sibley, C.G and Monroe, B.L. (1990) and BirdLife International (2007).

All specialists, who carried out the inventory of collection funds, their description, compilation of electronic bases and processing of information for the catalogue are full authors of respective sections of this publication. The contribution of all project participants into this work was quite important; therefore, the family names of the authors are listed in the alphabetic order.