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The time has come for Natural History Collections to claim co‐authorship of research articles
Author(s) -
Rouhan Germinal,
Dorr Laurence J.,
Gautier Laurent,
Clerc Philippe,
Muller Serge,
Gaudeul Myriam
Publication year - 2017
Publication title -
taxon
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.819
H-Index - 81
eISSN - 1996-8175
pISSN - 0040-0262
DOI - 10.12705/665.2
Subject(s) - national museum of natural history , natural history , national museum , art history , art , humanities , biology , sociology , anthropology , ecology
Received: 22 Jul 2017 | accepted: 27 Jul 2017 || publication date(s): online fast track, 1 Sep 2017; in print and online issues, n/a || © International Association for Plant Taxonomy (IAPT) 2017 Natural History Collections (NHC) contain an estimated 3 billion specimens (Brooke, 2000) curated by museums and universities worldwide. NHC offer an incredible and unparalleled sampling of global biodiversity of all taxonomic groups acquired over the past 500 years thanks to the efforts of generations of naturalists and curators. Despite the negative connotation of “antiquity”, which museum collections sometimes incorrectly convey due to poor communication about the importance of these collections and the lack of public knowledge about their scientific and historical significance, NHC represent not only a huge and ever-growing library of the living world, but also a currently valuable and unique resource for many research disciplines. NHC, often originally assembled to provide material for comparative purposes, traditionally were used to support anatomical, morphological, taxonomic, and systematic research. Other new applications have progressively emerged in response to societal demands and scientific challenges, usually taking advantage of technological advances. An important advance was the invention of the polymerase chain reaction (PCR) in the 1980s: the molecular revolution offered the opportunity to study an apparently infinite number of DNA characters from optimally dried specimens (Gaudeul & Rouhan, 2013). Technical barriers imposed by low-quality, degraded DNAs found in poorly dried or very old specimens have in many instances been overcome by next-generation sequencing (NGS) technologies. Consequently, an additional wealth of genetic and phylogenetic data derived from NHC became available beginning in the 2000s (Wandeler & al., 2007; Millar & al., 2008; Staats & al., 2013; Andreasen & al., 2014; Buerki & Baker, 2015; Parks & al., 2015; Suchan & al., 2016; Zedane & al., 2016; Silva & al., 2017). Other novel applications applied to NHC include, but are not limited to, isotopic and other chemical element analyses (Gritcan & al., 2016; Körner & al., 2016). In addition to specimens as biological objects for study, information derived from specimen labels has been recognised and exploited as another gold mine in The time has come for Natural History Collections to claim co-authorship of research articles