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Interrupting your last-hour-of-Friday scrolling to ponder the value of natural science collections.
A thread
A thread
I absolutely love museum collections and their ability to help wildlife. At @LeedsMuseums we have around 800,000 dead animals and plants, and this is just a fraction of the distributed national collection. A tiny amount is on display, the rest we use for education and research.
I think our specimens are ambassadors for their living relatives. Their existence means that habitats can be protected, like the classic DDT example: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1689032/pdf/HVY4H1K1A5156AKF_265_679.pdf but also through things like citizen science initiatives: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0006320716303512
Crucially, in the throes of our climate crisis, museum collections can be used to track the impact of climate change. This study used museum specimens to look at how edible mussels are being affected: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/gcb.15417
Using museum collections, new species are discovered and protected - like the Popa langur: https://www.nhm.ac.uk/discover/news/2020/november/new-species-of-monkey-is-already-critically-endangered.html
Museum collections can be used to map species' distribution changes, like this Mexican project: https://www.nature.com/articles/416626a. They can also shed light on extinct animals and their stories, like Thylacine distribution: https://www.eva.mpg.de/documents/Wiley-Blackwell/White_Ancient_JBiogeo_2018_2522118.pdf
...and, using museum collections, we can deepen our understanding of biodiversity https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/full/10.1098/rstb.2017.0386#main-content and evolution
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/mec.13529#:~:text=By%20comparing%20phenotypic%20and%20genotypic,a%20window%20into%20evolutionary%20processes.&text=In%20some%20instances%2C%20evolutionary%20change,context%20for%20potential%20selective%20forces.
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/mec.13529#:~:text=By%20comparing%20phenotypic%20and%20genotypic,a%20window%20into%20evolutionary%20processes.&text=In%20some%20instances%2C%20evolutionary%20change,context%20for%20potential%20selective%20forces.
And of course, I can’t finish off without mentioning that natural science collections are the UK’s favourite according to a 2008 London museum survey: http://www.natsca.org/files/London%20survey.pdf and a 2013 Jenesys survey of museum visitors: https://natsca.org/sites/default/files/publications-full/Evaluation-Report-Museum-Gallery-Preferences-Final_0.pdf
More stuff on this sort of thing here: http://www.natsca.org/importance-of-natural-science-collections
