By Richard B Primack
“Most men can keep a horse or a certain fashionable style of living, but few indeed can keep up great expectations.” Henry David Thoreau in his Journal.
Museum collections of plants and critters—small mammals, fish, insects, amphibians, trees, and wildflowers—are a good reflection of most species’ relative abundance in the wild. To reach this conclusion, a scientific team analyzed 1.4 million field observations and 73,000 museum records of over 22,00 species.
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| Species being monitored in the field. |
Using this approach, museum records can potentially be used to identify species that are declining over time and may need extra protection to prevent them from going extinct. As the pace of environmental change accelerates due to climate change and urbanization, the analysis of museum records will provide unique insights into how natural communities are changing in response.
Museum specimens of plants can be assessed for their relative abundance.
One factor that needs to be considered is that species that are rare in the wild are consistently over-represented in museums, whereas common species are under-represented in museums, because collectors tend to favor rare and unusual specimens and to pass over individuals of common species.
The possibilities for this avenue of research will be enhanced by the millions of museum specimens currently being digitized and made available on-line.
Title: Estimating Species Relative Abundances from Museum Records
Published in Methods in Ecology and Evolution journal,
URL: https://besjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/2041-210X.13705
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