Historical Museology Meets Tropical Biodiversity Conservation

The great scientific importance of historical collections is a well-established fact. On the contrary, their value as vehicles to promote public awareness and effective conservation projects in some of the most valuable biodiversity hotspots in the tropics appear to have been greatly overlooked by Natural History Museums and similar institutions. Utilising the vertebrate collections of Italian institutions as a case study, the great potential of these medium-sized museums to popularising and promoting biodiversity in some of the most valuable regions of the world, utilising the history of their collections and of the men which collected and studied them, is emphasised.     

Natural history collections and the future legacy of ecological research

Oecologia - Natural history collections are now being championed as key to broad ecological studies, especially those involving human impacts in the Anthropocene. However, collections are going...     

Evolutionary Theory and the Florence Paleontological Collections

Florence has a tradition of Natural Philosophy, and since as early as the sixteenth century fossils were collected by the Granduke. The Museum of Natural History of the University of Florence houses today collections that belonged to Nicolas Steno, when fossils were for the first time used as documents to reconstruct Earth history. Natural philosophers and geologists, both Italian and foreigners, continued to study fossils collected in Tertiary strata of Tuscany until the nineteenth century, when the first speculations on the origin of species were proposed. Charles Darwin himself mentions fossil vertebrates that are today on show in our museum. In the last years, this part of the history of science has been proposed to the public. The aim was to foster an understanding of the centrality of fossils in two cultural revolutions, the discovery of deep time and the birth of evolutionary theory–connected among themselves and with the emergence of geology. Dedicated volumes, public conferences, guided visits to the collections, and field trips to paleontological sites have attracted an attentive and responsive public, showing that the history of science can help deliver modern evolutionary thinking. Other activities aimed at students of all ages have also shown that the interaction between schools, university teachers, and museum personnel is vital to form the mind of future generations on the reality of the evolution of natural systems.     

Mapping the history of botanical collectors: spatial patterns,diversity, and uniqueness through time

This study examines changing spatial patterns of botanical collections over a 400 year time frame, focussing on the collections at the Natural History Museum (BM) in comparison with global patterns. The Plant Collector Resource Database, which contains 68,000 collector records was used to generate 250,667 unique collector × country × date records. We observe an exponential increase in the number of collectors over time. The activities of collectors were investigated in 50-year time-slices from 1650–2000. We specifically considered the geographic scope of collections (i.e., countries in which collections were made), the depth of collections (i.e., the number of collectors per country) and the uniqueness of collections (i.e., the proportion not duplicated in other herbaria). Uniqueness was highest for the earliest time-slice. Collector activity is shown to be strongly influenced by extrinsic factors such as the development of trade and empire, which allowed for collections to expand in scope and depth, and conflicts, which reduced collecting activity. A striking finding concerns the uniqueness of collections through time. The considerable unique element of the collections in herbaria highlighted by this study provides a strong motivation for digitization efforts to ensure that collections are accessible to address key questions in systematics, biogeography, and ecology.     

Natural history collections as windows on evolutionary processes

Natural history collections provide an immense record of biodiversity on Earth. These repositories have traditionally been used to address fundamental questions in biogeography, systematics and conservation. However, they also hold the potential for studying evolution directly. While some of the best direct observations of evolution have come from long‐term field studies or from experimental studies in the laboratory, natural history collections are providing new insights into evolutionary change in natural populations. By comparing phenotypic and genotypic changes in populations through time, natural history collections provide a window into evolutionary processes. Recent studies utilizing this approach have revealed some dramatic instances of phenotypic change over short timescales in response to presumably strong selective pressures. In some instances, evolutionary change can be paired with environmental change, providing a context for potential selective forces. Moreover, in a few cases, the genetic basis of phenotypic change is well understood, allowing for insight into adaptive change at multiple levels. These kinds of studies open the door to a wide range of previously intractable questions by enabling the study of evolution through time, analogous to experimental studies in the laboratory, but amenable to a diversity of species over longer timescales in natural populations.     

What does it mean to be wild? Assessing human influence on the environments of nonhuman primate specimens in museum collections

ObjectivesNatural history collections are often thought to represent environments in a pristine natural state—free from human intervention—the so‐called “wild.” In this study, we aim to assess the level of human influence represented by natural history collections of wild‐collected primates over 120 years at the Smithsonian Institution''s National Museum of Natural History (NMNH).Materials and MethodsOur sample consisted of 875 catarrhine primate specimens in NMNH collections, representing 13 genera collected in 39 countries from 1882 to 2004. Using archival and accession information we determined the approximate locations from which specimens were collected. We then plotted location coordinates onto publicly available anthrome maps created by Ellis et al. (Global Ecology and Biogeography, 2010, 19, 589), which delineate terrestrial biomes of human population density and land use worldwide since the 1700s.ResultsWe found that among primates collected from their native ranges, 92% were from an environment that had some level of human impact, suggesting that the majority of presumed wild‐collected primate specimens lived in an environment influenced by humans during their lifetimes.DiscussionThe degree to which human‐modified environments may have impacted the lives of primates currently held in museum collections has been historically ignored, implicating unforeseen consequences for collection‐based research. While unique effects related to commensalism with humans remain understudied, effects currently attributed to natural phenomena may, in fact, be related to anthropogenic pressures on unmanaged populations of primates.     

The Krantz collections of palaeontology held at the University of Coimbra (Portugal): a century of teaching and museum activities

The University of Coimbra holds a large repository of palaeontological collections bought from European mineral dealers, during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Among these specimens currently available at the Science Museum stand out three collections acquired from the Krantz house, between 1890 and 1913, for the Section of Mineralogy and Geology of the Natural History Museum. Their taxonomic diversity is high, as well as their geographic and stratigraphic wide-range origins, representing many classical locations and sedimentary formations of the European geology, and overseas countries. These collections have been used since long for teaching in practical classes of Natural Sciences at the University, using hands-on procedures. Together with other contemporary Krantz collections, known by several Iberian institutions, reveal an important heritage with both scientific and historical relevance that should be preserved, studied and reviewed from a scientific point of view.     

New approach for evaluating habitat stability using scarce records for both historical and contemporary specimens: a case study using Carabidae specimen records

Natural history collections, such as specimen records, are crucial resources for conservation and habitat management. However, these data are usually scarce compared to physical environmental data (e.g., digital terrain maps) that we often have little species data and a lot of physical environmental data with which to evaluate habitats. In this paper, we propose a method for evaluating habitat stability using scarce natural history records and abundant physical environmental data. We used both historical and contemporary specimen records of carabid beetles (areas in which records of the same species were recorded during both periods) and evaluated the attributes of these areas using terrain characteristics. We found two common terrain characteristics among the occupied areas: large total river length and low variation in elevation. These terrain characteristics suggest that habitats of carabid species have been conserved in disturbed and wet environments for a long time. These results are consistent with the ecological characteristics of carabid beetles. Our study shows that scarce natural history collections, combined with ingenuity, can be useful for evaluating habitats.     

Unlocking avian museum collections to enable and advance environmental change research

The rate and magnitude of contemporary changes in natural systems is unprecedented in the Earth's history. Studies of wild birds have been critically important in helping us understand and address these environmental changes. Avian collections provide a potentially unique perspective on change through time, but their role in environmental change research is limited by the availability of collections data. Here we describe how avian collections might be unlocked to enable environmental change research, and discuss the opportunities and constraints associated with this. We use the concept of the extended specimen to describe the types of data that could be unlocked from basic data for discoverability to enhanced data that might be directly applied to environmental change questions. We illustrate the type of environmental change research these data might support. We argue that data creation and access is currently limited by funding for digitization, a rather patchy understanding of the needs of the research community and less than adequate data-sharing by institutions and researchers. We develop a blueprint for addressing these issues which includes (1) improvements in sharing the data we are already creating and (2) building a better case for digitization at scale. As one of the largest avian collections in the world, the Natural History Museum, UK, is committed to unlocking our collections, but we will need input and support from the avian research community to do so.     

An Analysis of Factors Affecting Genotyping Success from Museum Specimens Reveals an Increase of Genetic and Morphological Variation during a Historical Range Expansion of a European Spider

Natural history collections house an enormous amount of plant and animal specimens, which constitute a promising source for molecular analyses. Storage conditions differ among taxa and can have a dramatic effect on the success of DNA work. Here, we analyze the feasibility of DNA extraction from ethanol preserved spiders (Araneae). We tested genotyping success using several hundred specimens of the wasp spider, Argiope bruennichi, deposited in two large German natural history collections. We tested the influence of different factors on the utility of specimens for genotyping. Our results show that not the specimen’s age, but the museum collection is a major predictor of genotyping success. These results indicate that long term storage conditions should be optimized in natural history museums to assure the utility of collections for DNA work. Using historical material, we also traced historical genetic and morphological variation in the course of a poleward range expansion of A. bruennichi by comparing contemporary and historical specimens from a native and an invasive population in Germany. We show that the invasion of A. bruennichi is tightly correlated with an historical increase of genetic and phenotypic variation in the invasive population.     

Determining the spatial autocorrelation of dengue vector populations: influences of mosquito sampling method,covariables, and vector control

We investigated spatial autocorrelation of female Aedes aegypti L. mosquito abundance from BG‐Sentinel trap and sticky ovitrap collections in Cairns, north Queensland, Australia. BG‐Sentinel trap collections in 2010 show a significant spatial autocorrelation across the study site and over a smaller spatial extent, while sticky ovitrap collections only indicate a non‐significant, weak spatial autocorrelation. The BG‐Sentinel trap collections were suitable for spatial interpolation using ordinary kriging and cokriging techniques. The uses of Premise Condition Index and potential breeding container data have helped improve our prediction of vector abundance. Semiovariograms and prediction maps indicate that the spatial autocorrelation of mosquito abundance determined by BG‐Sentinel traps extends farther compared to sticky ovitrap collections. Based on our data, fewer BG‐Sentinel traps are required to represent vector abundance at a series of houses compared to sticky ovitraps. A lack of spatial structure was observed following vector control treatment in the area. This finding has implications for the design and costs of dengue vector surveillance programs.     

Ernst Mayr,naturalist: His contributions to systematics and evolution

Ernst Mayr's scientific career continues strongly 70 years after he published his first scientific paper in 1923. He is primarily a naturalist and ornithologist which has influenced his basic approach in science and later in philosophy and history of science. Mayr studied at the Natural History Museum in Berlin with Professor E. Stresemann, a leader in the most progressive school of avian systematics of the time. The contracts gained through Stresemann were central to Mayr's participation in a three year expedition to New Guinea and The Solomons, and the offer of a position in the Department of Ornithology, American Museum of Natural History, beginning in 1931. At the AMNH, Mayr was able to blend the best of the academic traditions of Europe with those of North America in developing a unified research program in biodiversity embracing systematics, biogeography and nomenclature. His tasks at the AMNH were to curate and study the huge collections amassed by the Whitney South Sea Expedition plus the just purchased Rothschild collection of birds. These studies provided Mayr with the empirical foundation essential for his 1942Systematics and the Origin of Species and his subsequent theoretical work in evolutionary biology as well as all his later work in the philosophy and history of science. Without a detailed understanding of Mayr's empirical systematic and biogeographic work, one cannot possibly comprehend fully his immense contributions to evolutionary biology and his later analyses in the philosophy and history of science.     

The post‐Palaeozoic fossil record of drilling predation on lingulide brachiopods

Research on drilling predation, one of the most studied biological interactions in the fossil record, has been concentrated on prey with calcareous skeletons (e.g. molluscs, echinoids, rhynchonelliform brachiopods). Based on a compilation of literature sources and surveys of paleontological collections of the Florida Museum of Natural History and the National Museum of Natural History, we provide a tentative evaluation of the post‐Palaeozoic history of drilling predation on the organophosphatic brachiopods of the family Lingulidae. Despite temporal, geographical and methodological limitations of the data assembled here, the results indicate that lingulide brachiopods have been subject to drilling predation since at least the Eocene. Variation in drilling frequencies at the locality level suggests that lingulides may occasionally experience somewhat elevated predation pressures from drilling organisms. Overall, however, drilling predation on lingulide brachiopods has been infrequent in the Cenozoic and may have been absent in the Mesozoic. The Mesozoic‐to‐Cenozoic increase in drilling frequencies on lingulides is similar to the trends observed in other marine benthic invertebrates and consistent with the hypothesis that predation pressures increased through time in marine ecosystems.     

The peregrination of Alcide d’Orbigny's Foraminifera Collection at the Museum of Natural History,Paris: From the creation of a Palaeontology chair to the advent of Micropalaeontology

Alcide d’Orbigny made his mark in the history of French Palaeontology by becoming, in 1853, the first holder of the chair of Palaeontology at the Museum of Natural History, Paris. His work on foraminifera made him one of the pioneers of Micropalaeontology. Today, his original collection of foraminifera, bought by the Museum after his death, represents one of the most prestigious collections of the institution. However, for more than a century, it had been relegated to the reserves and to the good will of a few enthusiasts, while the priority of research study was given to the large vertebrate fossils. It survived the conflicts that affected the Palaeontology department, and was moved in response to construction works, wars and natural accidents such as the great flood of 1910. These different events, combined with inappropriate storage conditions, probably caused the fragility of the specimens. In order to better understand this phenomenon, known as Byne's decay, research has been undertaken to reconstruct the various storage points of the collection from its acquisition to the present day. This article aims to demonstrate the close link between the Foraminifera Collection and the history of the chair of Palaeontology, through evidence drawn from the archives of the Palaeontology laboratory and the Museum of Natural History.     

中国荔波世界自然遗产地动物模式标本名录

了解荔波世界自然遗产地动物模式标本分类学研究历史, 可为遗产地履行联合国教科文组织世界遗产中心的要求以及生物多样性保护工作提供参考。本文采用内容分析法, 对采自该遗产地并确立为模式种的物种, 收集相关文献并进行整理和分析, 编制了中国荔波世界自然遗产地动物模式标本名录。结果表明: (1)荔波世界自然遗产地动物模式标本共有204种, 隶属于3门6纲22目60科; (2)动物模式标本物种采集最早可追溯到1955年, 最近为2013年, 两者相隔58年, 而采集高峰期为1995-2004年; (3)以国内学者3人合力发表的物种最多(93种, 占总种数的45.59%); (4)模式物种的橱柜时间严重滞后, 从采集到发表滞后最长的达47年; (5)模式标本涉及66位采集人(或团队), 以国内学者居多(63位, 占总人数的95.45%); (6)遗产地动物模式标本被保存于27家国内外研究机构或私人收藏, 国内收藏1,504号标本, 国外收藏7号; (7)遗产地动物模式标本物种发表于169篇文献, 中文文献有155篇, 外文文献有14篇。随着研究的深入, 荔波世界自然遗产地有更多的新种不断被发现, 说明遗产地物种资源丰富, 生物多样性存在被低估的可能性, 暗示遗产地的物种分类研究工作仍需要投入大量的精力。     

Population history of the Hispaniolan hutia Plagiodontia aedium (Rodentia: Capromyidae): testing the model of ancient differentiation on a geotectonically complex Caribbean island

Hispaniola is a geotectonically complex island consisting of two palaeo-islands that docked c. 10 Ma, with a further geological boundary subdividing the southern palaeo-island into eastern and western regions. All three regions have been isolated by marine barriers during the late Cenozoic and possess biogeographically distinct terrestrial biotas. However, there is currently little evidence to indicate whether Hispaniolan mammals show distributional patterns reflecting this geotectonic history, as the island's endemic land mammal fauna is now almost entirely extinct. We obtained samples of Hispaniolan hutia (Plagiodontia aedium), one of the two surviving Hispaniolan land mammal species, through fieldwork and historical museum collections from seven localities distributed across all three of the island's biogeographic regions. Phylogenetic analysis using mitochondrial DNA (cytochrome b) reveals a pattern of historical allopatric lineage divergence in this species, with the spatial distribution of three distinct hutia lineages biogeographically consistent with the island's geotectonic history. Coalescent modelling, approximate Bayesian computation and approximate Bayes factor analyses support our phylogenetic inferences, indicating near-complete genetic isolation of these biogeographically separate populations and differing estimates of their effective population sizes. Spatial congruence of hutia lineage divergence is not however matched by temporal congruence with divergences in other Hispaniolan taxa or major events in Hispaniola's geotectonic history; divergence between northern and southern hutia lineages dates to c. 0.6 Ma, significantly later than the unification of the palaeo-islands. The three allopatric Plagiodontia populations should all be treated as distinct management units for conservation, with particular attention required for the northern population (low haplotype diversity) and the south-western population (high haplotype diversity but highly threatened).     

Genomics of natural history collections for understanding evolution in the wild

A long‐standing question in biology is how organisms change through time and space in response to their environment. This knowledge is of particular relevance to predicting how organisms might respond to future environmental changes caused by human‐induced global change. Usually researchers make inferences about past events based on an understanding of current static genetic patterns, but these are limited in their capacity to inform on underlying past processes. Natural history collections (NHCs) represent a unique and critical source of information to provide temporally deep and spatially broad time‐series of samples. By using NHC samples, researchers can directly observe genetic changes over time and space and link those changes with specific ecological/evolutionary events. Until recently, such genetic studies were hindered by the intrinsic challenges of NHC samples (i.e. low yield of highly fragmented DNA). However, recent methodological and technological developments have revolutionized the possibilities in the novel field of NHC genomics. In this Special Feature, we compile a range of studies spanning from methodological aspects to particular case studies which demonstrate the enormous potential of NHC samples for accessing large genomic data sets from the past to advance our knowledge on how populations and species respond to global change at multiple spatial–temporal scales. We also highlight possible limitations, recommendations and a few opportunities for future researchers aiming to study NHC genomics.     

Sequence capture phylogenomics of historical ethanol‐preserved museum specimens: Unlocking the rest of the vault

Natural history collections play a crucial role in biodiversity research, and museum specimens are increasingly being incorporated into modern genetics‐based studies. Sequence capture methods have proven incredibly useful for phylogenomics, providing the additional ability to sequence historical museum specimens with highly degraded DNA, which until recently have been deemed less valuable for genetic work. The successful sequencing of ultraconserved elements (UCEs) from historical museum specimens has been demonstrated on multiple tissue types including dried bird skins, formalin‐fixed squamates and pinned insects. However, no study has thoroughly demonstrated this approach for historical ethanol‐preserved museum specimens. Alongside sequencing of “fresh” specimens preserved in >95% ethanol and stored at ?80°C, we used extraction techniques specifically designed for degraded DNA coupled with sequence capture protocols to sequence UCEs from historical museum specimens preserved in 70%–80% ethanol and stored at room temperature, the standard for such ethanol‐preserved museum collections. Across 35 fresh and 15 historical museum samples of the arachnid order Opiliones, an average of 345 UCE loci were included in phylogenomic matrices, with museum samples ranging from six to 495 loci. We successfully demonstrate the inclusion of historical ethanol‐preserved museum specimens in modern sequence capture phylogenomic studies, show a high frequency of variant bases at the species and population levels, and from off‐target reads successfully recover multiple loci traditionally sequenced in multilocus studies including mitochondrial loci and nuclear rRNA loci. The methods detailed in this study will allow researchers to potentially acquire genetic data from millions of ethanol‐preserved museum specimens held in collections worldwide.     

Putting insects on the map: near‐global variation in sphingid moth richness along spatial and environmental gradients

Despite their vast diversity and vital ecological role, insects are notoriously underrepresented in biogeography and conservation, and key broad‐scale ecological hypotheses about them remain untested – largely due to generally incomplete and very coarse spatial distribution knowledge. Integrating records from publications, field work and natural history collections, we used a mixture of species distribution models and expert estimates to provide geographic distributions and emergent richness patterns for all ca 1000 sphingid moth species found outside the Americas in high spatial detail. Total sphingid moth richness, the first for a higher insect group to be documented at this scale, shows distinct maxima in the wet tropics of Africa and the Oriental with notable decay toward Australasia. Using multivariate models controlling for spatial autocorrelation, we found that primary productivity is the dominant environmental variable associated with moth richness, while temperature, contrary to our predictions, is an unexpectedly weak predictor. This is in stark contrast to the importance we identify for temperature as a niche variable of individual species. Despite divergent life histories, both main sub‐groups of moths exhibit these relationships. Tribal‐level deconstruction of richness and climatic niche patterns indicate idiosyncratic effects of biogeographic history for some of the less species‐rich tribes, which in some cases exhibit distinct richness peaks away from the tropics. The study confirms, for a diverse insect group, overall richness associations of remarkable similarity to those documented for vertebrates and highlights the significant within‐taxon structure that underpins emergent macroecological patterns. Results do not, however, meet predictions from vertebrate‐derived hypotheses on how thermoregulation affects the strength of temperature–richness effects. Our study thus broadens the taxonomic focus in this data‐deficient discourse. Our procedures of processing incomplete, scattered distribution data are a template for application to other taxa and regions.     

Implications of collection patterns of botanical specimens on their usefulness for conservation planning: an example of two neotropical plant families (Moraceae and Myristicaceae) in Peru

We evaluated the usefulness of herbarium collection databases for assessing patterns of species diversity and distribution based on a dataset from the flowering plant families Moraceae and Myristicaceae from the Peruvian Amazon. For Moraceae, a total of 3523 collections were used representing 134 species. The Myristicaceae were represented by 2113 collections of 46 species. We evaluated the distribution of collections based on 252 grid cells (0.5° size) covering all lowland rainforest in the Peruvian Amazon. We found that collections were concentrated in a few cells and that species diversity clearly increases in relation to collection density. Moraceae were collected in only 45% and Myristicaceae in only 31% of the 252 grid cells. Fifty percent of the collections came from just six and three cells, respectively. Most species were represented by only a small number of collections and collected only in a few grid cells, meaning a few widespread common species tend to dominate the collection records. Not surprisingly, most collections were made close to towns and transport routes. We evaluated the usefulness of rarefaction curves and diversity estimators for comparing diversity between regions. These techniques seem to be of little use for botanical collections due to violations of underlying assumptions. Problems such as accuracy of geographic and taxonomic data and strong bias in the spatial representation of the whole dataset are important to consider when basing conservation analysis, planning, and decision-making on seemingly large databases of biodiversity collections and are discussed in detail.