Abstract
We analysed plant collecting in Germany between 1826 and 2014 by counting specimens of common, rare, and invasive species deposited in the herbaria of Munich during that period. Plant collecting increased in the late 1940s and continued until the mid-1980s, but has since declined to levels similar to 1900. In spite of the decline in collecting, the number of specimens of invasive species has strongly increased. The only other attempt to analyse botanical collecting in a large European region, an analysis of botanical recording in the British Isles 1836 to 1988, did not find a decline by the mid-1980s. For the United States, an analysis of collecting between the 1890s and 1999 found that it peaked in the 1930s. Museum time-series (representing the same species collected at different times) have been integral to identifying temporal responses to environmental change, for example, changed flowering times in response to an earlier onset of spring and the change of a region's floristic composition. A possible way to combat the likely loss of time-series in European herbaria is for collection personal to engage with biology teachers at high schools and universities to encourage the collecting of local plants as part of courses in the life sciences.
Highlights
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To test for changings in collecting, Gardner and colleagues (2014) recently analysed specimen deposition in collections over 150 years (1860 – 2010) for a representative group of Australia’s passerines. They found that collecting of Meliphagoidea species, both common and rare, peaked around 1910, declined rapidly thereafter, and remained low through the periods of the two World Wars
Resurgence in collecting began during the late 1940s and continued until the mid-1980s, after which a gradual and sustained decline began, continuing to 2010, the end of their analysis. Current collecting of these birds is at levels equivalent to those of the early 1800s before collecting began in earnest in Australia
Summary
To test for changings in collecting, Gardner and colleagues (2014) recently analysed specimen deposition in collections over 150 years (1860 – 2010) for a representative group of Australia’s passerines They found that collecting of Meliphagoidea species, both common and rare, peaked around 1910, declined rapidly thereafter, and remained low through the periods of the two World Wars. We agree with Gardner and colleagues (2014) that the decline in collecting effort probably relates to dwindling funding for the research component of natural history collections, and societal perception that collecting of the local fauna and flora is unnecessary, perhaps even detrimental to the biota because of conservation concerns This is occurring at the same time as our ability to isolate DNA from herbarium specimens is turning herbaria into veritable DNA-storage units Al. 2014; Borchert 1996; Zohner & Renner 2014) and are important for both basic and applied science
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