Worldwide natural history collections contain more than three billion specimens assembled over hundreds of years, an irreplaceable physical record of life. Though there is bias inherent in their composition — from a disproportionate number of roadside plants to the dismissal of traditional ecological knowledge that could have expanded our understanding far sooner — we rely on them to gather data on the past, decipher the present, and forecast the future of the changing Earth. With modern technology, they can answer questions that their original collectors never dreamed of. Who knows what further mysteries they hold? Below, scientists explain their efforts to unravel some of those mysteries.
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Dr. Laura Caicedo-Quiroga, Smithsonian Institution
As the molecular technician for the Walter Reed Biosystematics Unit, I've worked on many projects that use the U.S. National Mosquito Collection for species identification, biosurveillance for disease risk assessment, and phylogenomics. Our most recent publication used specimens of medically important insects, mosquitoes and kissing bugs, to show how we can generate whole-genome sequences of museum specimens while preserving the archive with e-vouchers (specialized photography). While genomic data can help us understand insect evolution and biology, we also need to maintain collections. E-vouchers let us study morphology informed by genomic data, even when specimens are lost or damaged.
Several of these scientists spoke at the University of Michigan's virtual Early Career Scientists Symposium of 2021, Natural History Collections: Drivers of Innovation.
