Red tape or open slaughter? Examining and sampling biological animal specimens held in public and private collections

This study investigated whether trophy taxidermy specimens of Australia’s largest freshwater fish, Murray cod (Maccullochella peelii), can provide accurate records of historical body size. Taxidermy mounts came mostly from informal collections in hotels from across the Murray–Darling Basin, south-eastern Australia, comprising 20% whole-body and 80% head forms. We compared the morphology of mounts to live Murray cod, collected from the mid–Murray River in 2018, and identified the head morphometrics that most accurately described length and weight of whole mounts and live fish. Eight morphological characters were analysed for 60 whole mounts, 172 head mounts and 51 live fish. We found that inter-orbital distance, inter-nare width and upper jaw length were relatively robust to taxidermy processes and were reliable features for predicting fish total length and total weight. Shrinkage in head morphometrics due to taxidermy was evident, however, and we recommend that this be considered when reconstructing length and weight measures. We discuss how estimated body length and weight from head morphometrics of trophy fish, coupled with analysis of the accompanying remaining tissue and hard parts, opens up opportunities to explore patterns in genetics, life history, movement and trophic ecology of historical fish populations and of past environments.

Biological collections are central in understanding and preserving life on Earth. In Brazil, the most representative collections are kept by natural history museums, whose primary focus is in invertebrates, vertebrates and vascular plants. Only a few institutions keep repositories in different kingdoms. The Oswaldo Cruz Foundation (Fiocruz), established in 1900, is a strategic public health institution of the Ministry of Health of Brazil. As such, Fiocruz is responsible for a wide range of activities, from basic research to the development and production of vaccines, drugs, reagents and diagnostic kits. Its biological collections were soon established in the expeditions made by naturalists and physicians seeking integrated knowledge of the fauna, flora and tropical diseases. Since then, they have been part of the institutional policy. In a few decades, those collections were already in the forefront of basic and applied research on tropical parasitic and infectious diseases. Currently, they comprise thirty-three repositories representing part of the Brazilian diversity of bacteria, fungi, protozoa, helminths, arthropods, molluscs and plants of medical and environmental importance. Different methods of long-term preservation are applied for the conservation of this wide range of organisms represented by about 6 million specimens. Herein, we describe this range of collections and discuss their complementary role as repositories of groups not represented in other biological collections in Brazil. These valuable biological materials have been used in public health and medical research, as well as for technological development and innovation in Brazil. Parallel to this specific usage, Fiocruz biological collections have played and continue to play a unique and important role in understanding and conserving part of Brazil’s biodiversity that is currently under-represented in other biological and natural history collections in Brazil and South America.

– To determine if the Murray cod Maccullochella peelii peelii is an apex predator in the lowland rivers of the Murray‐Darling Basin, its feeding ecology was compared with that of the sympatric top predator, golden perch Macquaria ambiguaambigua based on samples supplied by recreational anglers. Diet and prey size were reconstructed from alimentary tract contents of Murray cod (N = 39) and golden perch (N = 52), and their feeding morphology was assessed and included calculation of length–gape relationships and relative gut index. Both species fed principally on fish and decapods although Murray cod was the more piscivorous (frequency of occurrence 44% versus 6%, total number 50% versus 2%, total weight 90.4% versus 16.0%). Based on reconstructions of prey sizes, fishes up to 1 kg in weight were preyed on by Murray cod, distinguishing it from other top predatory fishes in the Murray‐Darling Basin and supporting its classification as an apex predator.

Gordon John Howes 1938-2013 (Fish Systematist)

Oldsagssamlinger på danske herregårde

This dataset provides growth form classifications for 67,413 vascular plant species from North, Central, and South America. The data used to determine growth form were compiled from five major integrated sources and two original publications: the Botanical Information and Ecology Network (BIEN), the Plant Trait Database (TRY), the SALVIAS database, the USDA PLANTS database, Missouri Botanical Garden's Tropicos database, Wright (2010), and Boyle (1996). We defined nine plant growth forms based on woodiness (woody or non-woody), shoot structure (self-supporting or not self-supporting), and root traits (rooted in soil, not rooted in soil, parasitic or aquatic): Epiphyte, Liana, Vine, Herb, Shrub, Tree, Parasite, or Aquatic. Species with multiple growth form classifications were assigned the growth form classification agreed upon by the majority (>2/3) of sources. Species with ambiguous or otherwise not interpretable growth form assignments were excluded from the final dataset but are made available with the original data. Comparisons with independent estimates of species richness for the Western hemisphere suggest that our final dataset includes the majority of New World vascular plant species. Coverage is likely more complete for temperate than for tropical species. In addition, aquatic species are likely under-represented. Nonetheless, this dataset represents the largest compilation of plant growth forms published to date, and should contribute to new insights across a broad range of research in systematics, ecology, biogeography, conservation, and global change science.

Chapter 6 - Vascular plants and bryophytes

In the world's rivers, alteration of flow is a major driver of biodiversity decline. Global warming is now affecting the thermal and hydrological regimes of rivers, compounding the threat and complicating conservation planning. To inform management under a non-stationary climate, we must improve our understanding of how flow and thermal regimes interact to affect the population dynamics of riverine biota. We used long-term growth biochronologies, spanning 34years and 400,000km2 , to model the growth dynamics of a long-lived, apex predator (Murray cod) as a function of factors extrinsic (river discharge; air temperature; sub-catchment) and intrinsic (age; individual) to the population. Annual growth of Murray cod showed significant, curvilinear, life-stage-specific responses to an interaction between annual discharge and temperature. Growth of early juveniles (age 1+ and 2+ years) exhibited a unimodal relationship with annual discharge, peaking near median annual discharge. Growth of late juveniles (3+ to 5+) and adults (>5+) increased with annual discharge, with the rate of increase being particularly high in adults, whose growth peaked during years with flooding. Years with very low annual discharge, as experienced during drought and under high abstraction, suppress growth rates of all Murray cod life-stages. Unimodal relationships between growth and annual temperature were evident across all life stages. Contrary to expectations of the Temperature Size Rule, the annual air temperature at which maximum growth occurred increased with age. The stage-specific response of Murray cod to annual discharge indicates that no single magnitude of annual discharge is optimal for cod populations, adding further weight to the case for maintaining and/or restoring flow variability in riverine ecosystems. With respect to climate change impacts, on balance our results indicate that the primary mechanism by which climate change threatens Murray cod growth is through alteration of river flows, not through warming annual mean temperatures per se.

Sedimentary strata and fossils of Tuscany have been the object of inquiry from the late Middle Ages into the onset of modern science, passing through the art and words of Leonardo da Vinci, and culminating in the work of Nicolas Steno on a Galilean foundation. In the Age of Enlightenment, the Florentine Giovanni Targioni Tozzetti perfected Steno’s scheme for a history of Tuscany to be extended to a general theory of the Earth, corresponding with European savants, writing the oldest catalogue of fossils now hosted at the Museum of Natural History, University of Florence, and passing on Steno’s taxonomy. A few decades later, founders of modern geology, Georges Cuvier, Giambattista Brocchi, and Charles Lyell walked Tuscan fossiliferous hills and studied public and private collections, focusing on the anatomy of Tertiary species as a means to track the making of the modern fauna. The international impact of Brocchi’s Subapennine Fossil Conchology reached the young Charles Darwin, offering a theoretical background for the early development of modern evolutionary theory and fueling the modern taxonomic study of Tertiary marine shells. Under Igino Cocchi, in the year of national unity (1861), the Museum became the Italian Central Paleontological Collection, attracting collections from all over Italy and stirring an enduring international interest in Tertiary and Quaternary faunas, including fossil primates. With fossil specimens brought in by Steno, Targioni, and Cocchi, among many others, and with the organization of its catalogues reflecting the onset of modern taxonomy, the Museum of Natural History, University of Florence, is today an archive of the history of science as a whole and a means to bring environmental consciousness to future generations.

In this article, Kamila Kudkiewicz is dedicated to the question of Polish national museums in the nineteenth century. At the end of the eighteenth century, the historical territory of Poland was divided among Russia, Austria, and Prussia. Each of these countries had its own laws and policies towards Poles: take, for example, the policies of Russification and Germanization implemented by the Russian and German authorities in their respective territories and, contrastingly, the autonomy granted to Polish Galicia in Austria-Hungary after 1860. Despite the differences between the regions, in the second half of the nineteenth century, Poles founded museums that were perceived to be 'national', whether on a de facto basis - as attested by publications and written sources from the period - or because they had the word 'national' in their very name. Although early initiatives to create museums with the designation 'national' were undertaken in Poland as early as the eighteenth century, actual national museums (or institutions considered to be such) only emerged after 1870. The latter consisted of : the Musee National Polonais (Polish National Museum) in Rapperswil, Switzerland (opened 1870), the Muzeum im. Mielzynskich w Poznaniu (Mielzynski Museum in Poznan, 1881), the Muzeum Narodowe w Krakowie (National Museum in Krakow, 1883), the Muzeum Narodowe im. Krola Jana III we Lwowie (King Jan III National Museum in Lviv, 1908), and the Muzeum Sztuk Pieknych w Warszawie (Museum of Fine Arts in Warsaw), which was called after 1916 the Muzeum Narodowe w Warszawie (National Museum in Warsaw). The most important Polish national museums were established in large urban centres, namely in regional capitals (i.e. Poznan, the capital of Greater Poland in the nineteenth century within the borders of Prussia, and Krakow, the main city of Galicia in the nineteenth century within Austria and later Austria-Hungary), but also in other nations (i.e. Rapperswil in Switzerland). They were founded by city authorities, learned societies, or private collectors. The fact that the museums were established and managed by various entities made their activities very diverse. However, one can observe two main areas of interest for Polish national museums in the nineteenth century: national (Polish) history, on the one hand, and Polish art, primarily contemporary painting, on the other. In some cases, like that of Rapperswil, the dominating elements of the collection were connected with historical elements that, at least initially, were also sentimental, nostalgic, and emotional in character. This sentimentality bespeaks the institution's intended influence on viewers. Elsewhere, the wish to exhibit and promote Polish art prevailed over the interest in objects related to national history (i.e. the Mielzynski Museum in Poznan). And certain museums underwent an evolution in their declared status, from that of a national gallery of painting to that of an institution attempting to show various aspects of Polish culture (National Museum in Krakow). The present analysis of the activity of these museums will focus on the discourse accompanying their creation, the goals set by their founders, and the curation of their exhibitions.

The aims of this paper are to debate and raise awareness about the use of systematic, interconnected approaches for biodiversity collection curation by exploring the multi-disciplinary relevance of quality management tools developed by clinical biobanks. An appraisal of their best practices indicated the need for improved sample and process chain annotation as a significant number of historical collections used in medical research were of inadequate quality. This stimulated the creation of a new discipline, biospecimen science to develop quality management tools for clinical biobanks, two of which, Biospecimen Reporting for Improved Study Quality (BRISQ) and the Standard PRE-analytical Code (SPREC) report critical information about samples and process chain variables. Unprecedented advances in molecular-genetic and in silico technologies applied across the tree of life require international conservation networks to generate and share knowledge. This is used in biodiversity and systematics research, and to address the accelerating loss of species, including the sustainable use of bioresources. This review investigates the application of BRISQ and SPREC for biodiversity research and conservation using natural history, museum and living culture collections as case studies. The distinction between preservation and conservation is discussed with regard to process and storage treatments and how they impact on the usability of biospecimens and cultures. We conclude: (i) more rigorous approaches are needed for the quality management of biospecimens, bioresources and their associated sample and processing data to assure their fitness-for-purpose; and (ii) biospecimen science tools developed by clinical biobanks can be adapted to future-proof the quality of biodiversity collections and the reliability of molecular data generated from their use.

Records with the search string biogeograph* were collected from the Science Citation Index (SCI). A total of 3456 records were downloaded for the 1945-2006 period from titles of articles and reviews, and 10,543 records were downloaded for 1991-2006, taking into consideration also abstracts and keywords. Temporal trends of publications, geographical and institutional distribution of the research output, authorship, and core journals were evaluated. There were as many as 122 countries carrying out biogeographic research; in the most recent period, USA is the top producing country, followed by the United Kingdom, Australia, France, Germany, Spain, and Canada. There were 17,493 authors contributing to the field. During 1991-2006 there were 4098 organizations with authors involved in biogeographic research; institutions with higher number of papers are the Natural History Museum (United Kingdom), the University of California, Berkeley (USA), the Museum National d'Histoire Naturelle (France), the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (Mexico), the American Museum of Natural History (USA) and the Russian Academy of Sciences (Russia). Research articles are spread over a variety of journals, with the Journal of Biogeography, Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution, Molecular Ecology, and Biological Journal of the Linnean Society being the core journals. From 28,759 keywords retrieved those with the highest frequency were evolution, phylogeny, diversity, mitochondrial DNA, pattern(s), systematics, and population(s). We conclude that publications on biogeography have increased substantially during the last years, especially since 1998. The preferred journal for biogeographic papers is the Journal of Biogeography. Most frequent keywords seem to indicate that biogeography fits well within both evolutionary biology and ecology, with molecular biology and phylogenetics being important factors that drive their current development.

Monitoring data from apex predators were key drivers in the development of early chemicals legislations due to the population declines of many species during the twentieth century, which was linked to certain persistent organic pollutants (POPs). Besides triggering the development of global treaties (e.g. the Stockholm Convention), chemical monitoring data from apex predators have been particularly important for identifying compounds with bioaccumulative properties under field conditions. Many apex predators are protected species and only a few environmental specimen banks (ESBs) regularly collect samples as many ESBs were established during the 1980–1990s when apex predators were scarce. Today, many POPs have been banned, which contributed to the recovery of many apex predator populations. As a consequence, apex predator samples are now available in research collections (RCs) and natural history museums (NHMs). These samples can be used for routine analysis as well as for screening studies using novel analytical techniques and advanced data treatment workflows, such as suspect and non-target screening. The LIFE APEX project has demonstrated how these samples can be used in a cost-efficient way to generate data on legacy compounds and contaminants of emerging concern. Furthermore, it has described quality assurance/control measures to ensure high quality and comparable data, with a view to uses in chemicals risk assessment and management. To increase the visibility of available sample collections and monitoring data from apex predators we developed accessible online database systems. Additionally, the acquired high-resolution mass spectrometric data were stored in a digital sample freezing platform that allows retrospective suspect screening in previously analysed samples for substances that may be of concern/under assessment in the future. These databases provide open access to a wide range of chemical data, for use by regulators, researchers, industry and the general public, and contribute to a stronger link between science and policy.

Making use of apex predator sample collections: an integrated workflow for quality assured sample processing, analysis and digital sample freezing of archived samples

Intellectual Property and Biological Knowledge