Mammal collections of the Western Hemisphere: a survey and directory of collections

Abstract

As a periodic assessment of the mammal collection resource, the Systematic Collections Committee (SCC) of the American Society of Mammalogists undertakes decadal surveys of the collections held in the Western Hemisphere. The SCC surveyed 429 collections and compiled a directory of 395 active collections containing 5,275,155 catalogued specimens. Over the past decade, 43 collections have been lost or transferred and 38 new or unsurveyed collections were added. Growth in number of total specimens, expansion of genomic resource collections, and substantial gains in digitization and web accessibility were documented, as well as slight shifts in proportional representation of taxonomic groups owing to increasingly balanced geographic representation of collections relative to previous surveys. While we find the overall health of Western Hemisphere collections to be adequate in some areas, gaps in spatial and temporal coverage and clear threats to long-term growth and vitality of these resources have also been identified. Major expansion of the collective mammal collection resource along with a recommitment to appropriate levels of funding will be required to meet the challenges ahead for mammalogists and other users, and to ensure samples are broad and varied enough that unanticipated future needs can be powerfully addressed.

Preserve a Voucher Specimen! The Critical Need for Integrating Natural History Collections in Infectious Disease Studies

“…Natural history collections have evolved to incorporate best practices for field collection, vouchering, sample preservation, and data sharing (74), creating a vast resource of globally distributed collections (e.g., [130][131][132]. These best practices revolve around the voucher specimen as the common currency, which has resulted in a predictable workflow (Fig.…”

Decades-old studies of fungi associated with mammalian lungs and modern DNA sequencing approaches help define the nature of the lung mycobiome

“…The high frequency of detection of Pneumocystis in the autopsied lungs of humans [17] supports the hypothesis that frozen lung samples from nonhuman specimens in museum collections will prove valuable to studies of Pneumocystis and other members of the lung mycobiome. In this context we note that the Museum of Southwestern Biology at the University of New Mexico and the Museum of Vertebrate Zoology at the University of California, Berkeley, hold large ultrafrozen tissue collections of wild mammals [44] that are facilitating new avenues of research in pathobiology [45][46][47].…”

Born‐digital biodiversity data: Millions and billions

“…Since building eMammal as a repository for camera trap photographs at the Smithsonian in 2012, we have seen steady growth of records and by 2019 have > 1 million georeferenced, vouchered animal records (Figure ). To put this in perspective, the world's largest physical mammal collection, also at the Smithsonian, has just under 600,000 georeferenced mammal records spanning 180 years, and the second‐largest mammal collection (Museum of Southwestern Biology) has about half that (Dunnum et al, ). Furthermore, eMammal probably represents a relatively small amount of the camera trap data collected in the last decade.…”