The next generation of natural history collections

Schindel, David E.; Cook, Joseph A.

doi:10.1371/journal.pbio.2006125

Cited by 108 publications

(107 citation statements)

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“…Collections personnel are increasingly interested in facilitating such research; some are already collaborating with public health agencies to respond to emerging infectious diseases (DiEuliis et al . ; Schindel and Cook ), while others are using archival samples to study long‐term change in human diseases (Emery et al . ).…”

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confidence: 99%

Parasites lost: using natural history collections to track disease change across deep time

Harmon

Littlewood

Wood

2019

Frontiers in Ecol & Environ

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Recent decades have brought countless outbreaks of infectious disease among wildlife. These events appear to be increasing in frequency and magnitude, but to objectively evaluate whether ecosystems are experiencing rising rates of disease, scientists require historical data on disease abundance. Specimens held in natural history collections represent a chronological archive of life on Earth and may, in many cases, be the only available source of data on historical disease patterns. It is possible to extract information on past disease rates by studying trace fossils (indirect fossilized evidence of an organism's presence or activity, including coprolites or feces), sequencing ancient DNA of parasites, and examining sediment samples, mummified remains, study skins (preserved animal skins prepared by taxidermy for research purposes), liquid‐preserved hosts, and hosts preserved in amber. Such use of natural history collections could expand scientific understanding of parasite responses to environmental change across deep time (that is, over the past several centuries), facilitating the development of baselines for managing contemporary wildlife disease.

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confidence: 99%

Parasites lost: using natural history collections to track disease change across deep time

Harmon

Littlewood

Wood

2019

Frontiers in Ecol & Environ

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“…Major changes to plant collection practices in recent decades include the routine inclusion of geographic coordinates with the advent of GPS technologies and, to a lesser extent, tissue sampling for DNA analyses. Therefore, an open re-evaluation of collection methods is needed to maximize future use of herbarium data (Heberling and Isaac, 2017;Morrison et al, 2017;Schindel and Cook, 2018).Botanists have long been aware of the potential shortcomings of herbarium specimens and the information that can be derived from them. Fogg (1940) noted that many specimens are of limited value due to poor metadata (e.g., unknown collection dates, vague localities), sparse field notes, or insufficient material to permit verifiable PREMISE OF THE STUDY: Innovative approaches to specimen collection and curation are needed to maximize the utility of natural history collections in a new era of data use.…”

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iNaturalist as a tool to expand the research value of museum specimens

Heberling

Isaac

2018

Appl Plant Sci

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Premise of the StudyInnovative approaches to specimen collection and curation are needed to maximize the utility of natural history collections in a new era of data use. Associated data, such as digital images from the field, are routinely collected with recent herbarium specimens. However, these data often remain inaccessible and are rarely curated alongside the associated physical specimens, which limits future data use.Methods and ResultsWe leveraged the widely used citizen science platform, iNaturalist, to permanently associate field‐collected data to herbarium specimens, including information not well preserved in traditional specimens. This protocol improves the efficiency and accuracy of all steps from the collecting event to specimen curation and enhances the potential uses of specimens.Conclusions iNaturalist provides a standardized and cost‐efficient enhancement to specimen collection and curation that can be easily adapted for specific research goals or other collection types beyond herbaria.

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“…Baselines, against which to assess environmental stability and perturbation, are only as good as the accuracy of the species identifications, the depth of associated biodiversity informatics, the holistic approach to communitylevel collections (Schindel andCook, 2018, Galbreath et al, 2019), and authoritative archived specimens (with integrated data) that describe an ecological assemblage in space and time (e.g., Brooks et al, 2014;Cook et al, 2016;Dunnum, 2017). Diversity (species richness, abundance, host and geographic distributions) must be explored across an entire local or regional avifauna rather than with a focus on specific putative host species.…”

Section: Necessity and Adequacy Of Baselines For Diversitymentioning

confidence: 99%

Insights about Diversity of Tetrabothriidae (Eucestoda) among Holarctic Alcidae (Charadriiformes): What Is Tetrabothrius jagerskioeldi jagerskioeldi? ?

Hoberg¹,

Soudachanh²

2020

MANT

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Tetrabothriid cestodes are characteristic helminths that infect species of seabirds globally. We begin with the exploration of the diversity of tapeworms of the genus Tetrabothrius Rudolphi, 1819 (Eucestoda: Tetrabothriidae), some of which are distributed among seabirds of the family Alcidae (Charadriiformes) at boreal to higher latitudes of Holarctic seas. During the course of 2 decades of field inventory from 1975 through the early 1990s (in addition to earlier collections assembled by Robert L. Rausch and colleagues in Alaska initiated in the late 1940s), an extensive series of tapeworm specimens attributable to species of Tetrabothrius was recovered from seabirds across the North Pacific Basin. It was assumed based on published records of species richness in this fauna that a single species, Tetrabothrius jagerskioeldi Nybelin, 1916, would predominate among alcid hosts. In contrast, detailed study revealed considerable morphological complexity that could not be accommodated within a single species. Further, it was apparent that the limits for the primary morphological attributes of T. jagerskioeldi were not clearly defined. We redescribe T. jagerskioeldi based on direct examination of the type series of specimens from Sweden and an assemblage of specimens largely from alcid hosts from the North Pacific basin. Specimens of T. jagerskioeldi are diagnosed by a characteristic configuration of the genital atrium, position of the male and female genital canals, structure of the male and female organ systems, and numbers of testes. Based on the spectrum of characters we explored, it was apparent that numerous specimens of Tetrabothrius among genera and species of Alcidae from the North Pacific inventory could not be accommodated in T. jagerskioeldi and provisionally are referred to Tetrabothrius undescribed n. sp. pending ongoing evaluations. Superficially, these are all large and robust tapeworms referable to Tetrabothrius, potentially contributing to misidentifications and misattribution that have occurred both in the literature and in the few archived specimens in museums. We summarize the results of extensive inventory collections since 1950, establishing a distributional baseline for species of Tetrabothrius from a wide range of geographic localities and an assemblage of host species among the Alcidae and some species of Laridae, Stercorariidae, and Phalacrocoracidae. We further MANTER: Journal of Parasite Biodiversity Supplementary data tables follow the references.

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The next generation of natural history collections

Cited by 108 publications

References 23 publications

Parasites lost: using natural history collections to track disease change across deep time

Parasites lost: using natural history collections to track disease change across deep time

iNaturalist as a tool to expand the research value of museum specimens

Insights about Diversity of Tetrabothriidae (Eucestoda) among Holarctic Alcidae (Charadriiformes): What Is Tetrabothrius jagerskioeldi jagerskioeldi? ?

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