Biological Collections for understanding biodiversity in the Anthropocene

Citation:

Emily K Meineke, Jonathan T Davies, Barnabas H Daru, and Charles C Davis. 1/7/2019. “Biological Collections for understanding biodiversity in the Anthropocene.” Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B, 374, 1763, Pp. 20170386.
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Abstract:

Global change has become a central focus of modern biology. Yet, our knowledge of how anthropogenic drivers affect biodiversity and natural resources is limited by a lack of biological data spanning the Anthropocene. We propose that the hundreds of millions of plant, fungal and animal specimens deposited in natural history museums have the potential to transform the field of global change biology. We suggest that museum specimens are underused, particularly in ecological studies, given their capacity to reveal patterns that are not observable from other data sources. Increasingly, museum specimens are becoming mobilized online, providing unparalleled access to physiological, ecological and evolutionary data spanning decades and sometimes centuries. Here, we describe the diversity of collections data archived in museums and provide an overview of the diverse uses and applications of these data as …
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