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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Prof. Alexis Mychajliw, Middlebury College
Museums don't just hold collections of specimens; they represent archives of human-wildlife interactions. As part of the California Grizzly Research Network, I use collections (mammalogy, paleontology, archaeology) to reconstruct the ecology of California's now extinct subspecies of grizzly. Given ongoing discussions of reintroduction, we need collections to infer the bears' diet, morphology, and behavior. By comparing biochemical data from grizzly bones to historic narratives of interactions with humans, we can reframe our perspective on what California with grizzlies looked like in the past—and what that means for the future. Left: Dr. Mychajliw takes a hair sample from Monarch, model for the California state flag.
Several of these scientists spoke at the University of Michigan's virtual Early Career Scientists Symposium of 2021, Natural History Collections: Drivers of Innovation.
