The relevance of Italian museum collections for research and conservation: the case of mammals

Abstract

The twentieth century saw the decline of interest toward museum collections and an increased support to ‘experimental’ and ‘evolutionary’ biology, implicitly recognising the opposite nature of the ‘old’ museum-based taxonomy. With few exceptions, such as those of Florence and Verona, Italian museums after World War II were pushed at the border of scientific activity by the academic world and had to fight for their survival. Examples from the USA and elsewhere show the increased relevance of modern mammal collections to several fields of research. Despite an increased and welcomed attention to the value of historical collections, there is still scarce awareness of the need and relevance of maintaining and implementing mammal collections in museums as a valuable, long-term, source of data in the field of conservation biology, faunistic, taxonomy, molecular biology and health monitoring. In the present paper we suggest to create a network between mammalogists and a number of mammal collections, with one museum serving as focal point for a national mammal collection.