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. Schuyler Liphardt, University of Montana
I use natural history collections to study how viruses evolve in wild mammals across space and time. One of my recent projects used tissues from hundreds of northern short-tailed shrews to investigate the evolution of a recently discovered hantavirus. We showed that this new virus is actually a composite of multiple different viruses from North America, Asia, and Europe. This work highlighted both our limited understanding of virus diversity and the role collections play in discovering this diversity. Building our knowledge of virus diversity is fundamental in mitigating emergent disease, and natural history collections serve a vital role in this effort.
Several of these scientists spoke at the University of Michigan's virtual Early Career Scientists Symposium of 2021, Natural History Collections: Drivers of Innovation.
