What does it mean to be wild? Assessing human influence on the environments of nonhuman primate specimens in museum collections.

Andrea R Eller,Stephanie L Canington,Sabrina B Sholts,Rita M Austin,Sana T Saiyed,Courtney A Hofman

doi:10.1002/ece3.8006

Abstract

ObjectivesNatural history collections are often thought to represent environments in a pristine natural state—free from human intervention—the so‐called “wild.” In this study, we aim to assess the level of human influence represented by natural history collections of wild‐collected primates over 120 years at the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of Natural History (NMNH).Materials and MethodsOur sample consisted of 875 catarrhine primate specimens in NMNH collections, representing 13 genera collected in 39 countries from 1882 to 2004. Using archival and accession information we determined the approximate locations from which specimens were collected. We then plotted location coordinates onto publicly available anthrome maps created by Ellis et al. (Global Ecology and Biogeography, 2010, 19, 589), which delineate terrestrial biomes of human population density and land use worldwide since the 1700s.ResultsWe found that among primates collected from their native ranges, 92% were from an environment that had some level of human impact, suggesting that the majority of presumed wild‐collected primate specimens lived in an environment influenced by humans during their lifetimes.DiscussionThe degree to which human‐modified environments may have impacted the lives of primates currently held in museum collections has been historically ignored, implicating unforeseen consequences for collection‐based research. While unique effects related to commensalism with humans remain understudied, effects currently attributed to natural phenomena may, in fact, be related to anthropogenic pressures on unmanaged populations of primates.

Highlights

The field of natural history has historically focused on the study and description of the Earth and its organisms, including their behaviors, ecological relationships, and evolution (Fleischner, 2005; Greene, 2005)
At the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History (NMNH), accessions of captive, nonhuman primate (NHP) specimens have grown since the 1960s (Figure 1)
While we expected some variation in anthrome types from which the primates in our sample were collected, the amount of anthropogenic influence is surprisingly high; 91.7% of our sample is derived from some type of human-influenced landscape, whereas only 8.3% come from Wildlands

Summary

Introduction

The field of natural history has historically focused on the study and description of the Earth and its organisms, including their behaviors, ecological relationships, and evolution (Fleischner, 2005; Greene, 2005). The discipline of natural history grew substantially during periods of European imperialism in the 18th and 19th centuries, wherein Western naturalists traveled across colonized regions to describe and collect specimens in their natural settings (Greene, 2005). These early collectors sought out geographic and ecological spaces devoid of human settlement and human impact (Denevan, 2011)—otherwise known as “the wild.”. At the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History (NMNH), accessions of captive, nonhuman primate (NHP) specimens have grown since the 1960s (Figure 1). While a large proportion of them were acquired from the Smithsonian's National Zoological Park (NZP), their provenance is often recorded as “locality unknown.” In these cases, the actual place of origin for the individual is recorded, but zoos and other captive environments are not considered the species’ place of origin and are notated

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