Dear all,
I'm currently writing a concept for the future of our own natural history collection and I'm thinking a lot about the question, what material future scientists might need and what should thus be collected now. When you read through the strategic collection plans of other museums, you'll notice that most of them just continue to collect what they've always collected: who collected butterflies in the past, continues to collect butterflies, who collected birds, continues to collect those and so on. As most of you will know, this results in biased collections: some taxonomic groups are only represented by a small number of specimens while other groups (e.g. coleoptera, lepidoptera) are overrepresented. Wouldn't it be good to open up completely new collection sections in one's own Institution (e.g. unattractive, hard to preserve animals, parasites), rather than only sticking to what has always been collected? I'm really interested in your opinions and literature recommendations!
Best regards, Stefan
Dear Stefan,
In my opinion, i imagine New concept of museums. New age of nature collection. Based on virtual showing and according to pict. And photos. I suggested studies on genetic aspect of species. New data about taxanomy.
Hello Stefan; The ranges of many species are changing rapidly – poleward and upward. The rates of change and the extent of change are now, and will be, matters of great importance. I suggest that collecting at both the leading and trailing edges of species' distributions would provide exceedingly valuable data.
A model of this kind of thinking might be:
Riddell, EA. Et al. 2021. Exposure to climate change drives stability or collapse of desert mammal and bird communities. Science. 371(6529); 633 – 636.
Best regards, Jim Des Lauriers
Dear Stefan,
In my opinion, i imagine New concept of museums. New age of nature collection. Based on virtual showing and according to pict. And photos. I suggested studies on genetic aspect of species. New data about taxanomy.
The collection of DNA material is more important which can be deep-frozen and studied later. rather than animals themselves whose life span is limited and put in captivity.
These days museums can be linked online, so a regional museum can specialise according to its curators' skill-sets. These could concentrate on species that represent adaptation to cold and warm conditions, in these times of global climate change. Sufficiently large collections of poikoilotherms, plants and invertebrates, properly preserved, would allow future studies of variation and DNA analyses. A regional museum can also be a valuable repository of digital photos to aid citizen science and add to distribution studies.
I think there is a need of collection of new species which are ignored because of giving more importance to easily available ones.Much more collections of Pseudoscorpions are required in my opinion.
what about collecting seeds? food is part of a heritage that we must preserve.
Hi.
I agree with Diana Correia about the great relevance of seed collections, both of plants for food and wild species. In fact, at present there are some important projects on it. One of the priorities is to improve and increase the seed banks of threatened wild plants, like the ones which grow in the Atlantic Islands.
Best regards.
I have always though of a network of interests and legal permits between researchers. That way, a botanist collecting orchids could collect a lichen or a fly that other scientist is looking for, for example. Rare or endangered species could also be better documented thay way.
Unfortunately at least here in Brazil, the last thing the gov. wants is to help science.
There is also that - a huge lack of collab between countries.
In my opinion, all taxa are equally interesting. If some groups are collected and studied more than others, it is because of the lack of researchers. The lack of generational change is being noticed.
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