StuartReeves
Local rarity
I don't disagree with that.
-
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Is avian taxonomy still dependent on ongoing specimen collection? (1 Viewer)
- Thread starter lewis20126
- Start date
I don't disagree with that.
lewis20126
Well-known member
The lack of equivalence may just lie in the motivation / ultimate purpose...
cheers, a
Richard Klim
-------------------------
Julian Thomas
Well-known member
Hmmm…interesting debate. Apologies for the long post that follows, but I hope it is a useful contribution.
Emotionally I am against killing anything unnecessarily, but I suspect those who are in favour of specimen collecting would agree with that statement – it’s just a question of what you consider ‘necessary’. While I have a great deal of respect for Richard, I cannot take his ‘hypocrite’ comment seriously – everybody compromises their principles on an almost (if not actually) daily basis – it is impossible to do anything else and still live. What I find more objectionable is what Prof. Dawkins would term ‘whataboutery’, where those seeking to defend the collecting of specimens say (to paraphrase) ‘why aren’t you protesting against habitat destruction etc.?’ For one thing, how do you know we aren’t? (And yes I do.) Surely it is not beyond comprehension that those who do already campaign against such majorly destructive practices would also find specimen collecting (especially where it does not seem necessary and potentially harmful to the species concerned) equally abhorrent in its own much smaller way? And that the fact that it is done by those who profess to be heart-and-soul conservationists (and seem to be admirably so in other ways, by all accounts), rather than the truly selfish trophy hunters that have seen so much publicity recently, might actually hurt that bit more?
I’m no ‘bunnyhugger’ – if there is a truly justifiable scientific reason for specimen collecting, one that will materially help in the protection of as much biodiversity as possible against the onslaught of the human race (witting and unwitting), then fair enough. A few dead birds would be an acceptable price to pay. But it has to be for that reason, and that alone – the mere addition to the sum of human knowledge (normally a laudable aim) is not sufficient.
The reasons advanced so far for killing the Moustached Kingfisher appear to be crocks: in the time it took to ‘harvest’ the specimen, a sufficiently detailed set of photographs could have been taken from all angles and showing all possible features, and blood and feather samples could have been taken that would have given plenty of information on DNA, stable isotopes etc. If information was required on e.g. anthropogenic environmental toxins, then surely a commoner species and tissue biopsies would be a better route to go down. So far I have not seen an argument which details information which was or could be obtained from killing that bird which could not have been obtained in non-lethal ways. I would be happy if someone from the museum collection camp would explain what I am missing. I am not a field researcher, but I do have degree qualifications in biochemistry and ecology, so I am entirely capable of understanding the science.
The collection of vagrants is a very different issue, and entirely unjustifiable under any circumstances. (If the bird is already dead or dies soon after discovery, that is a different matter, and such chance specimens should be donated to a suitable museum.) If the Crowned Slaty Flycatcher was photographed before it was collected, then what was the justification advanced for its collection, as a matter of interest? In this case, as with the Yellow Bittern a good few years ago, the record is well documented, ID issues don’t really seem to arise, and there are no conservation implications at all. It would simply not occur to anyone to ‘collect’ an otherwise healthy ‘first for Britain’, so there does seem to be a transatlantic disconnect in this regard, as in much of this discussion, which is an interesting phenomenon in itself, though hopefully not an unbridgeable gulf.
Emotionally I am against killing anything unnecessarily, but I suspect those who are in favour of specimen collecting would agree with that statement – it’s just a question of what you consider ‘necessary’. While I have a great deal of respect for Richard, I cannot take his ‘hypocrite’ comment seriously – everybody compromises their principles on an almost (if not actually) daily basis – it is impossible to do anything else and still live. What I find more objectionable is what Prof. Dawkins would term ‘whataboutery’, where those seeking to defend the collecting of specimens say (to paraphrase) ‘why aren’t you protesting against habitat destruction etc.?’ For one thing, how do you know we aren’t? (And yes I do.) Surely it is not beyond comprehension that those who do already campaign against such majorly destructive practices would also find specimen collecting (especially where it does not seem necessary and potentially harmful to the species concerned) equally abhorrent in its own much smaller way? And that the fact that it is done by those who profess to be heart-and-soul conservationists (and seem to be admirably so in other ways, by all accounts), rather than the truly selfish trophy hunters that have seen so much publicity recently, might actually hurt that bit more?
I’m no ‘bunnyhugger’ – if there is a truly justifiable scientific reason for specimen collecting, one that will materially help in the protection of as much biodiversity as possible against the onslaught of the human race (witting and unwitting), then fair enough. A few dead birds would be an acceptable price to pay. But it has to be for that reason, and that alone – the mere addition to the sum of human knowledge (normally a laudable aim) is not sufficient.
The reasons advanced so far for killing the Moustached Kingfisher appear to be crocks: in the time it took to ‘harvest’ the specimen, a sufficiently detailed set of photographs could have been taken from all angles and showing all possible features, and blood and feather samples could have been taken that would have given plenty of information on DNA, stable isotopes etc. If information was required on e.g. anthropogenic environmental toxins, then surely a commoner species and tissue biopsies would be a better route to go down. So far I have not seen an argument which details information which was or could be obtained from killing that bird which could not have been obtained in non-lethal ways. I would be happy if someone from the museum collection camp would explain what I am missing. I am not a field researcher, but I do have degree qualifications in biochemistry and ecology, so I am entirely capable of understanding the science.
The collection of vagrants is a very different issue, and entirely unjustifiable under any circumstances. (If the bird is already dead or dies soon after discovery, that is a different matter, and such chance specimens should be donated to a suitable museum.) If the Crowned Slaty Flycatcher was photographed before it was collected, then what was the justification advanced for its collection, as a matter of interest? In this case, as with the Yellow Bittern a good few years ago, the record is well documented, ID issues don’t really seem to arise, and there are no conservation implications at all. It would simply not occur to anyone to ‘collect’ an otherwise healthy ‘first for Britain’, so there does seem to be a transatlantic disconnect in this regard, as in much of this discussion, which is an interesting phenomenon in itself, though hopefully not an unbridgeable gulf.
I used to be a staunch opponent of specimen collection, but these days I am much more on the fence. One argument that I have heard in the past (even if not in this discussion) is that a well done analysis of stomach content gives as much info about the feeding behavior of a bird as many hours of field work - which with for example a canopy species might not be feasible at all.
Vagrant collection is a completely different kettle of fish. I read about a case about 15? years ago in Denmark where a possible pine bunting was breeding. The final decision was to not put up a net to catch the individual because even a non-lethal sampling was not deemed justified with the sole purpose of determining if it was a real PB or a non-yellow mutation in a more common species (these details are by a memory that might not be correct).
Niels
Vagrant collection is a completely different kettle of fish. I read about a case about 15? years ago in Denmark where a possible pine bunting was breeding. The final decision was to not put up a net to catch the individual because even a non-lethal sampling was not deemed justified with the sole purpose of determining if it was a real PB or a non-yellow mutation in a more common species (these details are by a memory that might not be correct).
Niels
Nutcracker
Stop Brexit!
Sounds right to me, female Pine Bunting is barely distinguishable from leucistic female Yellowhammer. But maybe not distinguishable even with DNA!
John Watson
Well-known member
Very well said, Julian. The UK grew out of shooting vagrants a century ago.
As for analysing the stomach contents (as reported by njlarsen), shooting the bird seems in some cases to be a way of saving money and/or effort.
I would hope that Birdlife International would provide guidance on when "collecting" is acceptable, and that affiliated organisations would adhere strictly to these. Can anyone clarify whether this is or should be within their remit ? Seems like a workable solution to me.
As for analysing the stomach contents (as reported by njlarsen), shooting the bird seems in some cases to be a way of saving money and/or effort.
I would hope that Birdlife International would provide guidance on when "collecting" is acceptable, and that affiliated organisations would adhere strictly to these. Can anyone clarify whether this is or should be within their remit ? Seems like a workable solution to me.
On the value of collections themselves
[This is a long post. Sorry about that. If you want a quick summary, it would be that natural history collections are still relevant and important today and adding to them is important for both their existence and the future both of the collections and of research. This post is mostly on the merits of collections, rather than on a single instance of collection, or the many decisions that must be accounted for when working with rare or unknown taxa.]
I have been watching this thread and the kingfisher thread since their inception and have decided that I should comment on this thread. Now that it is the weekend, I finally have time to put a post together. To me, there seem to be several issues at play in this conversation, and I feel that I may be able to provide a useful comment on one of them.
The main issues that I see involved in this thread are:
1. Is avian taxonomy still dependent on specimen collection? (This is the stated thread title, after all.)
2. Is it justified to collect entire specimens of individuals for the purpose of taxonomy or scientific collections?
3. Are scientific collections relevant in the modern world where we can take excellent photos, DNA, etc?
My thoughts on each of these questions:
1. Yes. Taxonomy is dependent on collection of some sort of specimen. However, I am using specimen in a broader sense, following the ICZN, which, after all, governs nomenclature for animals and some things that were historically considered animals. If you go to the ICZN FAQ page ( http://iczn.org/faqs ), they have a series of questions under the “What are type specimens for?” heading that are useful in that regard.
2. When it comes to justification of anything, it often comes down to personal ethics and the ethics of one’s community. Because ethics tend to be deeply ingrained and slow to change, it is difficult to have a civilized conversation between different sides, especially as topics that have many facets (such as collecting) can rapidly become us-vs-them style debates, which are of no benefit to anyone.
3. I know others have written about this question both in this and other threads, and I may touch on their comments indirectly. This is the question (of these three) that is most concerning to me, and the reason that I have chosen to respond to a heated debate thread, which I typically avoid doing. While this topic is not necessarily being addressed directly, debates of the style that are occurring here influence perceptions both within our shared birding community and in the general public as to the value of scientific natural history collections. This is especially true as the value of a particular controversial specimen is often conflated with the value of collections in general.
I am a research scientist focusing on plant-insect work, so my answer may be slightly biased in that regard, but I try to keep myself current on topics in the broader ecological sphere. The answer to the question as to the relevance of natural history collections in the modern age, in my opinion, should be a resounding “yes.” Too often in recent years, universities and some museums are shuttering their collections, often donating them to other institutions. In the plant world, we see this in cases such as those where the University of Iowa, the University of Missouri, and the University of Nebraska State Museum have closed their herbaria. Fortunately, these were able to be donated to other institutions, so the specimens are still in use by the scientific community. In addition to plants, closures and staff reductions are also afflicting animal and other collections. There are plenty of examples of the concern over the decline in collections that are stored behind paywalls (e.g., http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v423/n6940/full/423575a.html ). However, the folks over at National Geographic wrote about this more eloquently than I can, so I won’t go into more detail, but suffice it to say that things have not improved since this story came out in 2004 ( http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2004/06/0603_040603_museums.html ).
What I do want to do is highlight a few reasons why we still need scientific collections, and why it is important that they grow over time. These examples are largely first-hand experiences on my part, and I am sure many more exist.
a. Research needs change over time. As others have pointed out, we cannot always forecast what will need to be researched in the future. Sometimes something happens and the easiest way to answer the question is to look at collections. My personal example for this comes from my work with an endangered plant in the Midwestern US. Because the public generally cares less about plants than animals, we are always needing to justify our work. One thing we noticed about this particular plant species was that during its bloom time, it seemed to be the main floral resource for pollinators in its habitat. However, to really say that with data, we would need data from different portions of the species range and across years to account for inter-annual variation. Because the species is rare and we do not have infinite funding, the best way we could gather this sort of data was to consult natural history collections. We looked at hundreds of specimens from this plant community, and determined that our initial hypothesis was correct (although the threatened plant is a more important resource in some years than others). This rare plant is an important floral resource, sustaining the pollinator community through a time each summer when little else is flowering. We would not have been able to say this without these collections, yet at the time of collection, collectors would have guessed that we would need/want to utilize their specimens in that way. While this is a plant example, the same can be true of birds and other animals.
b. Specimens can be significantly better than any photographs/field guides for taxa that are difficult to identify. This is generally more true for non-avian taxa for a variety of reasons, but I’m sure people describing new tapaculos appreciate collections, and there are likely other examples. My personal example from this comes from both plants and insects. Most of my insect work is with various species of beetles. In general, field guides simply don’t exist for these species. If I want to confirm the identification of a species that is utilizing one of my plants or to prepare myself to ID insects in the field, I have to visit a research collection that has been curated where I can see individuals of known identity. There are also groups of plants (the sedges of the genus Carex spring to mind, though there are plenty of other examples), where identification is significantly aided by having specimens present. When I am sorting through a key containing the ~200 Carex of Wisconsin, it is enormously useful to confirm my identifications using herbarium specimens, especially those that have been annotated or identified by Carex experts. For both of these things, collections are necessary.
c. Another topic that I study is species invasions. One way of documenting trends of past invasion and current invasion is the use of specimens that have their date and location (as all specimens should). Studying these invasions is much easier with more collections, especially though time and through the present day. Having specimens available is important in simple range expansion work, but can also be used for related questions. For example, we may be able to detect the spread of introduced insects through time by their sign on plant specimens. This is critical if there has been a lag phase between when the insect was introduced and when it came to the attention of the scientific and public communities. In the case of animals, I can think of cane toads in Australia and Eurasian Collared-Doves in North America. I saw a paper a while back that looked at cane toads and determined that there were morphological differences between the invasion front populations and the populations where the species has been established for longer. If I remember correctly, the invasion front individuals had longer legs or something of that nature. I don’t remember if this was a field or collections-based paper, but work on morphology is often logistically easier to carry out in museum collections than in the field for a variety of reasons (lots of specimens in one place, no need for the hoops that come with working with live individuals). On the avian side of things, the case of the Eurasian Collared-Doves spreading across this continent is an interesting example. I don’t know of work on this invasion that involves collections, but as someone that things about insects, I could easily see a case where you could go back to collections and look at the invertebrate fauna associated with the specimen (which is done relatively often), and see if the mites and other invertebrates keep up with the spread of the dove or if they spread afterward.
d. Even with genetics being available today, collections themselves and addition of new specimens are still valuable resources. I am speaking generally here and ignoring controversial specimens in this answer. I am not a molecular ecologist, and so do not have a personal story to go with this one. However, I do know of several good bird examples for this. One is on Marbled Murrelet. I heard a talk once from someone (maybe Zach Peery at the University of Wisconsin?) on Marbled Murrelets where they sampled genetics of extant murrelet populations and compared them with specimens that had been collected in the past to better understand genetic bottlenecks and population dynamics. Such comparisons would not be possible without collections. In addition, numerous taxonomic studies, such as those often mentioned in this forum, rely on museum collections to obtain their samples. Funding is not overflowing for systematics of any group of organisms, so it is often preferable to go to a museum where you can collect DNA samples from perhaps a hundred or more individuals from throughout the range of a given species or species pair. This sampling could occur over a couple days, and the costs are mostly the plane ticket and lodging expenses. To obtain the same information from living individuals may require long field seasons and lots of travel time; often being cost-prohibitive. Without specimens added to collections, this latter option, which can certainly be more costly, may be the only option.
e. This is an example of the potential for collections where new specimens are added. There is a lot of excellent work happening at the Field Museum in Chicago, Illinois, in regards to a huge and continually growing collection of avian specimens. Because Chicago is situated in the Central Flyway and is right along the shore of Lake Michigan, the area sees a heavy amount of migrants in spring and fall. With the skyscrapers and their lights, thousands of these birds meet an unfortunate end against the glass every migration. There is a group of birders (http://www.birdmonitors.net/) that retrieves all the birds they can find every day during the migration season. The living ones go to rehab, and the dead ones all go to the Field Museum. Consequently, the Field gains thousands of specimens. This dataset is incredibly valuable and can be utilized in many ways by virtue of its size and the timespan of the data. An undergrad that I worked with presented a paper at an undergrad research symposium at the Field a while back and while I was there, there was a talk by an undergrad that utilized this data to look at morphological change in bird populations, correlated with climate change (the premise being that the size of a given species is decreasing as the climate warms in accordance with Bergmann’s Rule). They were able to take a couple of standard measurements per individual and did so for hundreds of individuals of several species. The results were fairly striking, and are hopefully in the process of being published, but what it boils down to is that for some species, their size does seem to be changing, while in others, there is not any change in body size. This fantastic work that documents the impact of humanity on this planet would not have been possible without these collections, and especially without the addition of new specimens to that collection.
f. My last point is that it is impossible to do research on change through time of organisms without specimens that are collected through time. That includes the present day. The climate change example above is one example of what is possible with a great collection that spans many years. Too often, our collections are neglected and new specimens are not added. This past summer, I was trying to locate populations of a couple of weedy species in an 800 square kilometer area. I could drive around trying to find them out the car window, but it is often easier and much more gas-efficient to visit an herbarium to find where specimens had been collected. Unfortunately, the herbarium in that area contained most of its collection from the 1950s and 1960s, with only a handful of specimens from the 1990s and few if any from the near-present. Records that old are useful for many things, but finding extant populations of these ruderal species is not one of them. This is just one more example of the value of collecting, even in the present day.
If you have made it this far, I thank you. I apologize for the length of this post, but I will likely only make this one post, rather than getting deeply involved in such a heated topic.
The value and use of scientific collections is a topic that matters a lot to me. It is frightening to watch their closure and a travesty to our collective scientific, cultural, and natural history heritage. I hope that whatever your personal opinion may be in regards to the collection of certain controversial specimens, you can see the value in collections as a whole and that you can see the value of maintaining these collections both today and for the future.
[This is a long post. Sorry about that. If you want a quick summary, it would be that natural history collections are still relevant and important today and adding to them is important for both their existence and the future both of the collections and of research. This post is mostly on the merits of collections, rather than on a single instance of collection, or the many decisions that must be accounted for when working with rare or unknown taxa.]
I have been watching this thread and the kingfisher thread since their inception and have decided that I should comment on this thread. Now that it is the weekend, I finally have time to put a post together. To me, there seem to be several issues at play in this conversation, and I feel that I may be able to provide a useful comment on one of them.
The main issues that I see involved in this thread are:
1. Is avian taxonomy still dependent on specimen collection? (This is the stated thread title, after all.)
2. Is it justified to collect entire specimens of individuals for the purpose of taxonomy or scientific collections?
3. Are scientific collections relevant in the modern world where we can take excellent photos, DNA, etc?
My thoughts on each of these questions:
1. Yes. Taxonomy is dependent on collection of some sort of specimen. However, I am using specimen in a broader sense, following the ICZN, which, after all, governs nomenclature for animals and some things that were historically considered animals. If you go to the ICZN FAQ page ( http://iczn.org/faqs ), they have a series of questions under the “What are type specimens for?” heading that are useful in that regard.
2. When it comes to justification of anything, it often comes down to personal ethics and the ethics of one’s community. Because ethics tend to be deeply ingrained and slow to change, it is difficult to have a civilized conversation between different sides, especially as topics that have many facets (such as collecting) can rapidly become us-vs-them style debates, which are of no benefit to anyone.
3. I know others have written about this question both in this and other threads, and I may touch on their comments indirectly. This is the question (of these three) that is most concerning to me, and the reason that I have chosen to respond to a heated debate thread, which I typically avoid doing. While this topic is not necessarily being addressed directly, debates of the style that are occurring here influence perceptions both within our shared birding community and in the general public as to the value of scientific natural history collections. This is especially true as the value of a particular controversial specimen is often conflated with the value of collections in general.
I am a research scientist focusing on plant-insect work, so my answer may be slightly biased in that regard, but I try to keep myself current on topics in the broader ecological sphere. The answer to the question as to the relevance of natural history collections in the modern age, in my opinion, should be a resounding “yes.” Too often in recent years, universities and some museums are shuttering their collections, often donating them to other institutions. In the plant world, we see this in cases such as those where the University of Iowa, the University of Missouri, and the University of Nebraska State Museum have closed their herbaria. Fortunately, these were able to be donated to other institutions, so the specimens are still in use by the scientific community. In addition to plants, closures and staff reductions are also afflicting animal and other collections. There are plenty of examples of the concern over the decline in collections that are stored behind paywalls (e.g., http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v423/n6940/full/423575a.html ). However, the folks over at National Geographic wrote about this more eloquently than I can, so I won’t go into more detail, but suffice it to say that things have not improved since this story came out in 2004 ( http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2004/06/0603_040603_museums.html ).
What I do want to do is highlight a few reasons why we still need scientific collections, and why it is important that they grow over time. These examples are largely first-hand experiences on my part, and I am sure many more exist.
a. Research needs change over time. As others have pointed out, we cannot always forecast what will need to be researched in the future. Sometimes something happens and the easiest way to answer the question is to look at collections. My personal example for this comes from my work with an endangered plant in the Midwestern US. Because the public generally cares less about plants than animals, we are always needing to justify our work. One thing we noticed about this particular plant species was that during its bloom time, it seemed to be the main floral resource for pollinators in its habitat. However, to really say that with data, we would need data from different portions of the species range and across years to account for inter-annual variation. Because the species is rare and we do not have infinite funding, the best way we could gather this sort of data was to consult natural history collections. We looked at hundreds of specimens from this plant community, and determined that our initial hypothesis was correct (although the threatened plant is a more important resource in some years than others). This rare plant is an important floral resource, sustaining the pollinator community through a time each summer when little else is flowering. We would not have been able to say this without these collections, yet at the time of collection, collectors would have guessed that we would need/want to utilize their specimens in that way. While this is a plant example, the same can be true of birds and other animals.
b. Specimens can be significantly better than any photographs/field guides for taxa that are difficult to identify. This is generally more true for non-avian taxa for a variety of reasons, but I’m sure people describing new tapaculos appreciate collections, and there are likely other examples. My personal example from this comes from both plants and insects. Most of my insect work is with various species of beetles. In general, field guides simply don’t exist for these species. If I want to confirm the identification of a species that is utilizing one of my plants or to prepare myself to ID insects in the field, I have to visit a research collection that has been curated where I can see individuals of known identity. There are also groups of plants (the sedges of the genus Carex spring to mind, though there are plenty of other examples), where identification is significantly aided by having specimens present. When I am sorting through a key containing the ~200 Carex of Wisconsin, it is enormously useful to confirm my identifications using herbarium specimens, especially those that have been annotated or identified by Carex experts. For both of these things, collections are necessary.
c. Another topic that I study is species invasions. One way of documenting trends of past invasion and current invasion is the use of specimens that have their date and location (as all specimens should). Studying these invasions is much easier with more collections, especially though time and through the present day. Having specimens available is important in simple range expansion work, but can also be used for related questions. For example, we may be able to detect the spread of introduced insects through time by their sign on plant specimens. This is critical if there has been a lag phase between when the insect was introduced and when it came to the attention of the scientific and public communities. In the case of animals, I can think of cane toads in Australia and Eurasian Collared-Doves in North America. I saw a paper a while back that looked at cane toads and determined that there were morphological differences between the invasion front populations and the populations where the species has been established for longer. If I remember correctly, the invasion front individuals had longer legs or something of that nature. I don’t remember if this was a field or collections-based paper, but work on morphology is often logistically easier to carry out in museum collections than in the field for a variety of reasons (lots of specimens in one place, no need for the hoops that come with working with live individuals). On the avian side of things, the case of the Eurasian Collared-Doves spreading across this continent is an interesting example. I don’t know of work on this invasion that involves collections, but as someone that things about insects, I could easily see a case where you could go back to collections and look at the invertebrate fauna associated with the specimen (which is done relatively often), and see if the mites and other invertebrates keep up with the spread of the dove or if they spread afterward.
d. Even with genetics being available today, collections themselves and addition of new specimens are still valuable resources. I am speaking generally here and ignoring controversial specimens in this answer. I am not a molecular ecologist, and so do not have a personal story to go with this one. However, I do know of several good bird examples for this. One is on Marbled Murrelet. I heard a talk once from someone (maybe Zach Peery at the University of Wisconsin?) on Marbled Murrelets where they sampled genetics of extant murrelet populations and compared them with specimens that had been collected in the past to better understand genetic bottlenecks and population dynamics. Such comparisons would not be possible without collections. In addition, numerous taxonomic studies, such as those often mentioned in this forum, rely on museum collections to obtain their samples. Funding is not overflowing for systematics of any group of organisms, so it is often preferable to go to a museum where you can collect DNA samples from perhaps a hundred or more individuals from throughout the range of a given species or species pair. This sampling could occur over a couple days, and the costs are mostly the plane ticket and lodging expenses. To obtain the same information from living individuals may require long field seasons and lots of travel time; often being cost-prohibitive. Without specimens added to collections, this latter option, which can certainly be more costly, may be the only option.
e. This is an example of the potential for collections where new specimens are added. There is a lot of excellent work happening at the Field Museum in Chicago, Illinois, in regards to a huge and continually growing collection of avian specimens. Because Chicago is situated in the Central Flyway and is right along the shore of Lake Michigan, the area sees a heavy amount of migrants in spring and fall. With the skyscrapers and their lights, thousands of these birds meet an unfortunate end against the glass every migration. There is a group of birders (http://www.birdmonitors.net/) that retrieves all the birds they can find every day during the migration season. The living ones go to rehab, and the dead ones all go to the Field Museum. Consequently, the Field gains thousands of specimens. This dataset is incredibly valuable and can be utilized in many ways by virtue of its size and the timespan of the data. An undergrad that I worked with presented a paper at an undergrad research symposium at the Field a while back and while I was there, there was a talk by an undergrad that utilized this data to look at morphological change in bird populations, correlated with climate change (the premise being that the size of a given species is decreasing as the climate warms in accordance with Bergmann’s Rule). They were able to take a couple of standard measurements per individual and did so for hundreds of individuals of several species. The results were fairly striking, and are hopefully in the process of being published, but what it boils down to is that for some species, their size does seem to be changing, while in others, there is not any change in body size. This fantastic work that documents the impact of humanity on this planet would not have been possible without these collections, and especially without the addition of new specimens to that collection.
f. My last point is that it is impossible to do research on change through time of organisms without specimens that are collected through time. That includes the present day. The climate change example above is one example of what is possible with a great collection that spans many years. Too often, our collections are neglected and new specimens are not added. This past summer, I was trying to locate populations of a couple of weedy species in an 800 square kilometer area. I could drive around trying to find them out the car window, but it is often easier and much more gas-efficient to visit an herbarium to find where specimens had been collected. Unfortunately, the herbarium in that area contained most of its collection from the 1950s and 1960s, with only a handful of specimens from the 1990s and few if any from the near-present. Records that old are useful for many things, but finding extant populations of these ruderal species is not one of them. This is just one more example of the value of collecting, even in the present day.
If you have made it this far, I thank you. I apologize for the length of this post, but I will likely only make this one post, rather than getting deeply involved in such a heated topic.
The value and use of scientific collections is a topic that matters a lot to me. It is frightening to watch their closure and a travesty to our collective scientific, cultural, and natural history heritage. I hope that whatever your personal opinion may be in regards to the collection of certain controversial specimens, you can see the value in collections as a whole and that you can see the value of maintaining these collections both today and for the future.
Paul Chapman
Well-known member
Cwbirder
Thank you for that post. My fear is that there is a significant threat to the funding of care for collections and for necessary collection in itself through unnecessary collection. I've posted on this forum before on the necessity of collection in the right circumstances, the need for a continued ability for amateurs to collect in the right circumstances and the dangers to biodiversity through ill-considered restrictions.
All the best
Thank you for that post. My fear is that there is a significant threat to the funding of care for collections and for necessary collection in itself through unnecessary collection. I've posted on this forum before on the necessity of collection in the right circumstances, the need for a continued ability for amateurs to collect in the right circumstances and the dangers to biodiversity through ill-considered restrictions.
All the best
Andy Adcock
Worst person on Birdforum
In response to Pauls OP and at the risk of exposing my own ignorance, wouldn't the pursuit of a phylogenetic rather than biological concept remove a lot (possibly not all) the arguable necessity of taking 'specimens'?
The phylogenetic approach is far more holistic is it not when awarding or considering specific status?
Again, forgive my very base grasp of taxonomy if I have this round my neck, I'm not a scientist and I think I'm probably not alone in scratching my head as I read the latest round of 'splits and lumps' and the reasoning behind them.
Andy
The phylogenetic approach is far more holistic is it not when awarding or considering specific status?
Again, forgive my very base grasp of taxonomy if I have this round my neck, I'm not a scientist and I think I'm probably not alone in scratching my head as I read the latest round of 'splits and lumps' and the reasoning behind them.
Andy
lewis20126
Well-known member
Interesting post, I'll address just one point here while watching the rugby
-C). I too am very interested in Carex and have seen and photographed all 74 UK Species (less C. cespitosa) and a lot of hybrids. Contra your contention here, I find it fairly easy to distinguish them in the field. Features such as soft ligules are lost dry material. More widely, with many smaller grasses, parts of the flower such as the lemma and palea are much easier to see in the field. Maybe we are lucky is Europe to have good botanical keys and do not have to resort to reference collections.Interesting you mention Tapaculos. Having seen most of them, I would have thought they (the Scytalopus) are amongst the worst species to check in a reference collection. Far better to hear the vocals, record them and then see the living bird.
cheers, alan
lewis20126
Well-known member
I'm struggling to see the fundamental point here as your points seem contradictory. In the British Isles, if I want to find ruderal plant species, I would look for suitable habitat within the known range (eg by plant atlas). Ruderals are by their nature, ephemeral colonisers of disturbed habitats so as soon as the habitats mature they are lost to the eye (but may of course be present in the seed bank). Referring to collections will not help me locate current populations.
So what use are the historic collections in this context? I guess we are lucky in having a robust national plant atlas from the 1960s and many county floras back to the 19th century.
Taking this back to birds, I'm not sure what use they serve in defining changing distributions over time, any more than records by field observation?
cheers, alan
lewis20126
Well-known member
Convenience
Having reviewed all of the posts from the collectors and avoiding the red herrings, it all seems to come down to this point. It is just much more convenient to grab your latte and wander over to the drawer, pick up the specimen and look at features x, y and z than mount (another?) expedition to do the same. Comparing Species A and Species B is much easier if they are side by side. This is hard to do in the field!
It may not be a popular justification (from either side) but I think it may be the fundamental one.
cheers, alan
Having reviewed all of the posts from the collectors and avoiding the red herrings, it all seems to come down to this point. It is just much more convenient to grab your latte and wander over to the drawer, pick up the specimen and look at features x, y and z than mount (another?) expedition to do the same. Comparing Species A and Species B is much easier if they are side by side. This is hard to do in the field!
It may not be a popular justification (from either side) but I think it may be the fundamental one.
cheers, alan
GMK
Well-known member
I think your fear is generally unfounded. Funding, which for a great many museums comes mainly from government coffers, is not being reduced because bureaucrats have, like the apparent majority of birders posting here, a revulsion to specimen collection. Rather, cuts are just part of the general war of attrition on institutions that apparently yield limited or no tangible benefits to society in general and therefore represent easy targets for savings.
As a prime example, the scientific staff working at NHMUK, Tring, has noticeably shrunk over the past few decades and almost no taxonomic or related research is being conducted in house there, due to budgetary changes. Such shrinkage has occurred despite this museum having had no active specimen collection programme to speak of since the late 1960s, not because of any desire to punish its staff for their impudence in killing birds unnecessarily.
Nigel Collar of BirdLife has published several papers on precisely this subject (see: http://people.ds.cam.ac.uk/cns26/NJC/Publications.html, scroll down until you reach the section entitled "On scientific collecting"), which I can only recommend that those interested read. However, the introduction to Collar (2000), which already contains exactly the draft protocol for specimen collection called for above (!), does bear repetition (underlinings mine, of course):
The killing of birds for scientific reference causes debate and dispute whose intensity is in inverse proportion to its relevance as a conservation issue, with similar degrees of heat being generated only by such momentous things as the standardization of vernacular bird names. Doubtless this is because these are seemingly simple, black-and-white issues over which many people feel they have sufficient personal clarity and power to achieve a resolution. Really important matters – global warming, intransigent debt arrangements for developing nations, exponential human population growth, obliteration of habitats for short-term human gain, scandalous abuses of biocide in agriculture, saturation-level corruption and incompetence in state conservation agencies, all of which are poised to degrade the ornithological environment beyond recognition – belong to another dimension altogether in which most of us are simply sleepwalking towards doomsday. It is important, then, to get the collecting issue into reasonable perspective as soon as humanly possible.
lewis20126
Well-known member
lewis20126
Well-known member
Collection of vagrants
I notice nobody has rushed to support this one! This suggests this unsupportable activity is on its last legs and that proof of occurrence is best undertaken through wider observation, videos and photographs which are less easy to fake than specimen locale fraud (typically with few or lone "observers").
cheers, alan
I notice nobody has rushed to support this one! This suggests this unsupportable activity is on its last legs and that proof of occurrence is best undertaken through wider observation, videos and photographs which are less easy to fake than specimen locale fraud (typically with few or lone "observers").
cheers, alan
Tiraya
San Diego CA
One possible side effect from collecting bird specimens, particularly endangered species, is that the region will be more strictly protected in future?
1. collect rare bird
2. public/people create an uproar/disagree with it
3. public/people influence more protection for said site
4. stability of said bird is improved?
(No evidence for this, just picking possibilities out of a hat...perhaps that isn't useful here...ah well.)
1. collect rare bird
2. public/people create an uproar/disagree with it
3. public/people influence more protection for said site
4. stability of said bird is improved?
(No evidence for this, just picking possibilities out of a hat...perhaps that isn't useful here...ah well.)
I doubt if many of the participants in this thread would disagree with you on that. I certainly wouldn't. Who gives a damn about vagrants anyway except twitchers?
While I am generally a strong supporter of continued collection on the part of responsible institutions, I agree with you on that one. It's not that I don't think valuable info could be gained from collecting vagrants (subtle subspecific identifications, but more importantly the presence of parassites or pathogens that may have contributed to causing vagrancy), it's just that I don't think it's worth the uproar it would create within the birding community. Museums already have a hard sell trying to convince the birding public of the usefulness of continued collection, and collecting vagrants seems incredibly tin-eared in that regard.
Speaking of vagrants, though, I am the only one who sees a disconnect between being adamantly opposed to collecting, and then rushing out to twitch the latest vagrant that has just arrived, no matter what condition it has arrived in? I mean that Acadian Flycatcher looked like it was on its last legs, and it's hard to believe it made it through the night, yet lots of people - many of whom I presumed are opposed to collecting on bird welfare grounds - rejoiced at its arrival. Don't get me wrong, I am keenly interested in vagrants and spend much of each fall on a small remote island looking for them (leaving Friday!), but at least I acknowledge that a phenomenon that gives me great pleasure (avian vagrancy) actually ends up killing most of the birds it affects - it helps put museum collecting into perspective.
Indeed, convenience is key in this situation. Inevitably with latte in hand, we museum collectors do find that repeated, expensive expeditions to previously visited localities are inconvenient.
You see, laziness (I believe that is what you meant by "convenience") is a prerequisite to any museum collector, since once we arrive at a collecting locality, we don't just see (sorry, I meant to say "murder") the highlights in an afternoon and then move on to the next site. Nope, in our sanguine way, we tend to set up a camp there and spend somewhere between a week and two months. Thus, the experience collectors build of the avifauna of a locality and the populations of those birds is clearly inferior to that of the non-collecting birder who only visits briefly and expeditiously moves on.
The latter group tends to see their target species at Site X along roads, at lodges, and at sites that they read about on BirdForum or some other online report that had been posted by previous visiting birders (and of course, NONE of those sites would ever have been old collecting localities!). Non-collecting birders, never swayed by the sweet decadence of convenience, decide that the status of Species Y at known Site X must reflect the world population's status because it would be unheard of if the roadside sites for Species Y would likely be the most degraded, whereas if one hiked a few hours into those mountains (you know, the nearly pristine ones you can see from that road), there would still be healthy populations of Species Y. These birders, then, are unarguably more conservation-minded and can talk down to lazy museum collectors from a justified position of moral superiority.
Also, the numbers of taxa described, without any voucher material, by non-collecting birders that have stood the test of time so overshadow those described with specimens collected in cold blood, that they prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that the convenience of having side-by-side specimen comparisons is wildly overstated at all levels.
Thanks for your enlightening and succinct boiling down of the entire collecting argument, Alan. You have indeed uncovered the uncomfortable truth about the love of convenience of museum collectors. I'd forgotten that that was the main reason for why we perform side-by-side comparisons of specimens in the museum rather than running back and forth between populations of related forms, trying desperately to compare photos taken in cloudy forests vs. sunny slopes and make our decisions on taxonomy that way. Expedition work is truly a lazy form of fieldwork, and that museum collectors glom onto it so easily has nothing to do with the difficulty of trying to raise scant funding for expedition work, dealing with months of governmental bureaucracy to get permits, the months of planning, poring over maps, and trying to connect with local knowledge to visit localities that are easily several days travel from the nearest road, or indeed the amount of time needed to prepare specimens and collect the data that go on their labels, as well as the associated sound recordings, field notes, photographs (both in hand and in the field), etc., that one has to organize after an expedition. Nor does it involve the fact that, after visiting a site, doing a general collecting expedition there, and reporting what species are present, that site often becomes a conservation unit, perhaps even a popular birding locality, making future followup targeted collecting visits to it nearly impossible. Nope, it all boils down to pure laziness. Oops, my venti latte is empty, better hop in my Escalade and drive to the nearest Starbucks to get it topped off.
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