Natural history collections document biological responses to climate change

AbstractAggregate biodiversity data from museum specimens and community observations have promise for macroscale ecological analyses. Despite this, many groups are under-sampled, and sampling is not homogeneous across space. Here we used butterflies, the best documented group of insects, to examine inventory completeness across North America. We separated digitally accessible butterfly records into those from natural history collections and burgeoning community science observations to determine if these data sources have differential spatio-taxonomic biases. When we combined all data, we found startling under-sampling in regions with the most dramatic trajectories of climate change and across biomes. We also found support for the hypothesis that community science observations are filling more gaps in sampling but are more biased towards areas with the highest human footprint. Finally, we found that both types of occurrences have familial-level taxonomic completeness biases, in contrast to the hypothesis of less taxonomic bias in natural history collections data. These results suggest that higher inventory completeness, driven by rapid growth of community science observations, is partially offset by higher spatio-taxonomic biases. We use the findings here to provide recommendations on how to alleviate some of these gaps in the context of prioritizing global change research.

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Collectively, we need to accelerate Arctic specimen sampling

Arctic Science ◽

10.1139/as-2016-0037 ◽

2017 ◽

Vol 3 (3) ◽

pp. 515-524

Author(s):

Kevin Winker ◽

Jack Withrow

Keyword(s):

Climate Change ◽

Natural History ◽

Biological Systems ◽

The Arctic ◽

Future Research ◽

Individual Species ◽

Time And Space ◽

Natural History Collections ◽

Specimen Resource ◽

Specimen Sampling

Natural history collections are not often thought of as observatories, but they are increasingly being used as such to observe biological systems and changes within them. Objects and the data associated with them are archived for present and future research. These specimen collections provide many diverse scientific benefits, helping us understand not only individual species or populations but also the environments in which they live(d). Despite these benefits, the specimen resource is inadequate to the tasks being asked of it — there are many gaps, taxonomically and in time and space. We examine and highlight some of these gaps using bird collections as an example. Given the speed of climate change in the Arctic, we need to collectively work to fill these gaps so we can develop and wield the science that will make us better stewards of Arctic environments.

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Applying computer vision to digitised natural history collections for climate change research: temperature-size responses in British butterflies

10.1101/2021.12.21.473511 ◽

2021 ◽

Author(s):

Rebecca J Wilson ◽

Alexandre F de Siqueira ◽

Stephen J Brooks ◽

Benjamin W Price ◽

Lea M Simon ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Climate Change ◽

Computer Vision ◽

Natural History ◽

Global Change ◽

Adult Size ◽

Phenotypic Data ◽

Climate Change Research ◽

Biotic Response ◽

Natural History Collections ◽

Global Change Research

Natural history collections (NHCs) are invaluable resources for understanding biotic response to global change. Museums around the world are currently imaging specimens, capturing specimen data, and making them freely available online. In parallel to the digitisation effort, there have been great advancements in computer vision (CV): the computer trained automated recognition/detection, and measurement of features in digital images. Applying CV to digitised NHCs has the potential to greatly accelerate the use of NHCs for biotic response to global change research. In this paper, we apply CV to a very large, digitised collection to test hypotheses in an established area of biotic response to climate change research: temperature-size responses. We develop a CV pipeline (Mothra) and apply it to the NHM iCollections of British butterflies (>180,000 specimens). Mothra automatically detects the specimen in the image, sets the scale, measures wing features (e.g., forewing length), determines the orientation of the specimen (pinned ventrally or dorsally), and identifies the sex. We pair these measurements and meta-data with temperature records to test how adult size varies with temperature during the immature stages of species and to assess patterns of sexual-size dimorphism across species and families. Mothra accurately measures the forewing lengths of butterfly specimens and compared to manual baseline measurements, Mothra accurately determines sex and forewing lengths of butterfly specimens. Females are the larger sex in most species and an increase in adult body size with warm monthly temperatures during the late larval stages is the most common temperature size response. These results confirm suspected patterns and support hypotheses based on recent studies using a smaller dataset of manually measured specimens. We show that CV can be a powerful tool to efficiently and accurately extract phenotypic data from a very large collection of digital NHCs. In the future, CV will become widely applied to digital NHC collections to advance ecological and evolutionary research and to accelerate the use of NHCs for biotic response to global change research.

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230. Preparing for a Large-Scale Natural History Collections Relocation—Evaluating Potential Exposures

10.3320/1.2758590 ◽

2005 ◽

Author(s):

C. King ◽

P. Labbie

Keyword(s):

Natural History ◽

Large Scale ◽

Natural History Collections

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Joseph Sidebotham: vicissitudes of a Victorian collector

Archives of Natural History ◽

10.3366/anh.2015.0305 ◽

2015 ◽

Vol 42 (2) ◽

pp. 197-210 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Laurence M. Cook

Keyword(s):

Natural History ◽

Species Limits ◽

Clear Cut ◽

Natural History Collections ◽

As Species ◽

Scientific World

Joseph Sidebotham (1824–1885) was a Manchester cotton baron whose natural history collections are now in the Manchester Museum. In addition to collecting he suggested a method for identifying and classifying Lepidoptera and investigated variation within species as well as species limits. With three close collaborators, he is credited with discovering many species new to Britain in both Lepidoptera and Coleoptera. A suspicion of fraud attaches to these claims. The evidence is not clear-cut in the Lepidoptera, but a possible reason is suggested why Sidebotham, as an amateur in the increasingly professional scientific world, might have engaged in deceit.

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The Banksian natural history collections of the Endeavour voyage and their relevance to modern taxonomy

Archives of Natural History ◽

10.3366/anh.1981.010 ◽

1981 ◽

Vol 1981 (1) ◽

pp. 61-70

Author(s):

H. B. Carter ◽

Judith A. Diment ◽

C. J. Humphries ◽

Alwyne Wheeler

Keyword(s):

Natural History ◽

Natural History Collections

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Correspondence between Adolphe Brongniart and Robert Schomburgk: trading natural history collections for honours

Archives of Natural History ◽

10.3366/anh.2002.29.3.333 ◽

2002 ◽

Vol 29 (3) ◽

pp. 333-336

Author(s):

PIOTR DASZKIEWICZ ◽

MICHEL JEGU

Keyword(s):

Nineteenth Century ◽

Natural History ◽

Dominican Republic ◽

Southeast Asia ◽

Herbarium Specimens ◽

British Guiana ◽

Natural History Collections ◽

History Of ◽

Source Of Information ◽

German Naturalist

ABSTRACT: This paper discusses some correspondence between Robert Schomburgk (1804–1865) and Adolphe Brongniart (1801–1876). Four letters survive, containing information about the history of Schomburgk's collection of fishes and plants from British Guiana, and his herbarium specimens from Dominican Republic and southeast Asia. A study of these letters has enabled us to confirm that Schomburgk supplied the collection of fishes from Guiana now in the Laboratoire d'Ichtyologie, Muséum National d'Histoire Naturelle, Paris. The letters of the German naturalist are an interesting source of information concerning the practice of sale and exchange of natural history collections in the nineteenth century in return for honours.

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