Abstract
Museum specimens serve as the bedrock of systematic and taxonomic research and provide the basis for repeatability or reinterpretation of preserved aspects of phenotypes. Specimens are also fundamental to fields such as ecology, behavior, and development. Each specimen is a record of biodiversity and documents a particular species present at a particular place at a particular time. As such, specimens can provide key evidence for biodiversity and conservation initiatives. Four aspects of natural history collections and their use are discussed here: 1) collection, curation, and use of specimens, particularly non-traditional specimens; 2) the use of specimens and technological advances in morphology, ontogeny, systematics, and taxonomy; 3) specimen use in other fields of biology and ecology; and 4) specimen use in education and outreach. Collections, and their vitality, depend on both their continued roles in traditionally supported fields (e.g., taxonomy) as well as emerging arenas (e.g., epidemiology). Just as a library that ceases buying books becomes obsolete, or at least has diminished relevance, a natural history collection that does not continue to grow by adding new specimens ultimately will limit its utility. We discuss these roles of specimens and speak directly to the need to increase the visibility of the inherent value of natural history collections and the care of the specimens they protect for future generations.
Highlights
Museum specimens serve as the bedrock of systematic and taxonomic research and provide the basis for repeatability or reinterpretation of preserved aspects of phenotypes
Such cabinets continued to be in vogue throughout the 18th century (Farber, 1982), and as an offshoot to this competitive assembly of collections, the efforts to catalog and classify specimens held in such collections directly led to advances in taxonomy and biology (e.g., Linnaeus’s and Artedi’s development of binomial nomenclature)
Each specimen is a record of biodiversity and documents, through a physical object, that a particular species was present at a particular place at a particular time
Summary
Museum specimens serve as the bedrock of systematic and taxonomic research and provide the basis for repeatability or reinterpretation of preserved aspects of phenotypes. Despite calls to their importance and continued relevance in many fields (Lane, 1996), museum collections lost broad-based institutional support, in the 20th century, due to the growing appeal for data sources that were decoupled from archived preserved specimens (e.g., rise of genetic lines of evidence originating during the New Synthesis). Specimens can be viewed as including any aspect of the specimen that can be archived, curated, and used to advance the understanding of its biology, including data points related to the physical object Said another way, the value of a specimen is inherent in the specimen itself, but, perhaps more importantly, it comes from the use and study of the specimen and all the information that is contained by the context of its collection. By expanding the concept of the specimen to include the physical object itself and the associated aspects of the object that are recorded both preand post-collection, the potential uses of that specimen increase
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