Wikipedia

Scientific collection

A scientific collection is a collection of items that are preserved, catalogued, and managed for the purpose of scientific study.[1]

Ornithological collection at the Museum of Comparative Zoology of Natural history of Harvard Museum of Natural History. Museum collections are tremendous repositories of specimens and data of many sorts, including phenotypes, tissue samples, vocal recordings, geographic distributions, parasites, and diet.
View in a Seedbank at the Western Regional Plant Introduction Station

Scientific collections dealing specifically with organisms plants, fungi, animals, insects and their remains, may also be called natural history collections or biological collections.[2] The latter may contain either living stocks or preserved repositories of biodiversity specimens and materials.[3]

Scientific collections hold a tangible portion of the cumulative evidence base in such fields as biology (especially taxonomy and evolutionary biology), geology, and archaeology.[1] They may be stored and managed by governments, educational institutions (e.g. colleges and universities), private organizations (including museums), or individuals.

Prominent uses of scientific collections include the systematic description and identification of biological species, the study and prediction of long-term historical trends (including impacts of climate change), the dating and analysis of historical objects (e.g. via wood samples and ice cores with annual rings), and the maintenance of teaching resources.[1][4]

Indexing

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Preparation of a plant for a Herbarium

The indexing of the collections was historically made by directories, catalogs, index cards, today supplemented by or replaced by databases with information such as e.g. scientific description, including picture, name, location, find circumstances, fund age, scientific analysis, phylogenetic relationships, DNA and isotope analysis results, analysis of pollutants, references, condition of the property, owner changes and name changes.[5]

Many organizations support the indexing and handling of their collections by specialist libraries.

Institutions

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Entomologist Clare Butcher collecting specimens for the New Zealand Arthropod Collection.

Research collections hold especially museums, notably natural history museums, botanical gardens, universities and other research institutions. There are also independent research collections, such as the Zoological State Collection Munich with over 20 million stuffed animals for research purposes. Public authorities such as national geological agencies or police units hold partly research collections too.

The Natural History Museum in London - with one of the biggest collections worldwide - is home to life and earth science specimens comprising some 70 million items within five main collections: botany, entomology, mineralogy, palaeontology and zoology.

Largest German Natural History Museum is the Museum für Naturkunde, Berlin, with over 30 million objects, including 9 million beetles and 275,000 jars with preserved in alcohol animals.[5]

Geology / Earth Sciences collections

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Remarkable Earth Sciences collections:

Biological collections / Life Sciences collections

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Biological collections are a requirement for species descriptions, following the International Code of Zoological Nomenclature. That is, if a new species is described in the literature, at least one specimen of that species (the "holotype") needs to be deposited in a collection (Article 72.3).[13]

Typical collection objects in biology are fossils of organisms, preserved samples of extant animals and plants (protected from decay by drying or preparation), but also live plants, animals, bacteria and active viruses.

Plant collections are referred to as herbaria. Live plants are collected in the Botanical gardens, (trees ) in arboretums, aquariums, and partly in seedbanks, as well as e.g. algae from the Culture Collection of Algae Göttingen.[14] Live animals are collected in zoos and aquariums. The great Old Botanical Garden of the University of Göttingen e.g. represents about a collection of 17,000 species.[15]

Notable collections

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Particularly well known in Germany are the major research collections of the Naturmuseum Senckenberg of Senckenberg Society for Nature Research in Frankfurt am Main with over 22 million natural objects (Herbaria 1 Million). Senckenberg offers to open up his collection to the SESAM database.

The Macaulay Library is the world's largest archive of animal sounds. It includes more than 175,000 audio recordings covering 75 percent of the world's bird species. There are an ever increasing numbers of insect, fish, frog, and mammal recordings. The video archive includes over 50,000 clips, representing over 3,500 species.

An example for a special collection are the objects of the Deutsche Sammlung von Mikroorganismen und Zellkulturen (German Collection of Microorganisms and Cell Cultures).

Selected large collections (more than 1,000,000 specimens) in Europe

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Selected large biological collections (more than 1,000,000 specimens) in the Americas

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Collection permit

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Many, if not most countries have strict regulations for collecting. This is often a consequence of past, colonial exploitation, when foreign countries exported biological or other materials in large quantities without permission or compensation for local people. Over the past decades, many countries have become very sensitive of such exploitations and national laws now regulate what can be collected by whom.

Collecting biological (or other) specimens usually requires a research or collection permit. For instance, Indonesia passed a law in 2019 that includes strict requirements on foreign scientists doing research in the country, including the need to include local collaborators and effectively a ban on exporting specimens. Researchers are not allowed to take samples or even digital information out of the country, except for procedures that cannot be done in Indonesia. Scientists who work in Indonesia without a proper permit will be blacklisted for 5 years; repeat offenders have to pay a $290,000 fine. Working without a material transfer agreement (MTA) is punishable by 2 years in prison or a $145,000 fine.[16]

Other rules have been documented in the Nagoya Protocol which specifically regulates access to genetic resources and their fair and equitable sharing.

Examples for national research permit applications:

History / Human Heritage collections

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Dendrochronology is located on the border between biology and history. An annual ring table or tree-ring calendar is a time series of tree ring s of dendrochronological art tree. Because of the specific growth of each tree species and regional differences of climate, such a table must always refer to a single species from the same region. Important tree chronologies are:

Remerkable History collections:

Literature

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See also

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References

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  1. 1 2 3 National Science and Technology Council, Committee on Science, Interagency Working Group on Scientific Collections (2009). Scientific Collections: Mission-Critical Infrastructure of Federal Science Agencies (PDF). Washington, DC: Office of Science and Technology Policy. Archived from the original (PDF) on November 18, 2016.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  2. ↑ Schindel, David E.; Cook, Joseph A. (2018-07-16). "The next generation of natural history collections". PLOS Biology. 16 (7) e2006125. doi:10.1371/journal.pbio.2006125. ISSN 1545-7885. PMC 6062129. PMID 30011273.
  3. ↑ The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. "Biological Collections – Division on Earth and Life Studies". Retrieved 2019-11-12.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  4. ↑ Cook, Joseph A.; Edwards, Scott V.; Lacey, Eileen A.; Guralnick, Robert P.; Soltis, Pamela S.; Soltis, Douglas E.; Welch, Corey K.; Bell, Kayce C.; Galbreath, Kurt E.; Himes, Christopher; Allen, Julie M. (2014-08-01). "Natural History Collections as Emerging Resources for Innovative Education". BioScience. 64 (8): 725–734. doi:10.1093/biosci/biu096. ISSN 0006-3568.
  5. 1 2 Die Sammlungen | Deutsche Naturwissenschaftliche Forschungssammlung
  6. ↑ "Geowissenschaftliche Sammlungen Mineralogische Sammlung - TU Bergakademie Freiberg". Archived from the original on 2013-12-24. Retrieved 2014-01-04.
  7. ↑ "Geowissenschaftliche Sammlungen Lagerstätten-Sammlung - TU Bergakademie Freiberg". Archived from the original on 2013-12-24. Retrieved 2014-01-04.
  8. ↑ "Geowissenschaftliche Sammlungen Petrologische Sammlung - TU Bergakademie Freiberg". Archived from the original on 2013-12-24. Retrieved 2014-01-04.
  9. ↑ "Geowissenschaftliche Sammlungen Paläontologische Sammlung - TU Bergakademie Freiberg". Archived from the original on 2013-12-24. Retrieved 2014-01-04.
  10. ↑ "Geowissenschaftliche Sammlungen Stratigrafische Sammlung - TU Bergakademie Freiberg". Archived from the original on 2013-12-24. Retrieved 2014-01-04.
  11. ↑ "Geowissenschaftliche Sammlungen Lithothek - TU Bergakademie Freiberg". Archived from the original on 2013-12-24. Retrieved 2014-01-04.
  12. ↑ IODP/ODP - Kernlager / Bremen Core Repository (BCR), Universität Bremen · Universitätssammlungen in Deutschland
  13. ↑ Union internationale des sciences biologiques; Commission internationale de nomenclature zoologique, eds. (1999). International code of zoological nomenclature (4th ed.). London: International trust for zoological nomenclature. ISBN 978-0-85301-006-7.
  14. ↑ "EPSAG". Archived from the original on 2012-09-01. Retrieved 2014-01-02.
  15. ↑ Georg-August-Universität Göttingen - Alter Botanischer Garten
  16. ↑ Rochmyaningsih, Dyna (2019-07-26). "Indonesia gets tough on foreign scientists". Science. 365 (6451): 304–305. doi:10.1126/science.365.6451.304.
  17. ↑ "The National Numismatic Collection". Smithsonian Institution. Retrieved October 12, 2011.
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