https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adf6434

A global approach for natural history museum collections
Integration of the world’s natural history collections can provide a
resource for decision-makers
Kirk R. Johnson , Ian F. P. Owens, and the Global Collection
GroupAuthors Info & Affiliations
Science
23 Mar 2023
Vol 379, Issue 6638
pp. 1192-1194
DOI: 10.1126/science.adf6434

Over the past three centuries, people have collected objects and
specimens and placed them in natural history museums throughout the
world. Taken as a whole, this global collection is the physical basis
for our understanding of the natural world and our place in it, an
unparalleled source of information that is directly relevant to issues
as diverse as wildlife conservation, climate change, pandemic
preparedness, food security, invasive species, rare minerals, and the
bioeconomy (1). Strategic coordination and use of the global collection
has the potential to focus future collecting and guide decisions that
are relevant to the future of humanity and biodiversity. To begin to map
the aggregate holdings of the global collection, we describe here a
simple and fast method to assess the contents of any natural history
museum, and report results based on our assessment of 73 of the world’s
largest natural history museums and herbaria from 28 countries.
Today, more than a thousand natural history museums exist, with the
largest ones located in Europe and North America. The world’s natural
history collections provide a window into the planet’s past and present,
and they are increasingly being used to make actionable predictions
relative to climate change, biodiversity loss, and infectious disease.
For example, natural history museum data are the fundamental source of
primary biodiversity knowledge underlying major policy frameworks. The
2018 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Special Report on
Global Warming of 1.5°C used over 385 million species occurrence
records, aggregated and tracked by the Global Biodiversity Information
Facility (GBIF), from 5432 data providers, mostly natural history
museums (2, 3), to show species movement in response to climate change
[see supplementary materials (SM) for additional case studies].
Yet despite their enormous potential value to society, the information
embedded in the collections housed in these museums is largely
inaccessible. Fortunately, advances in digital, isotopic, imaging, and
genomic technologies, as well as machine learning and artificial
intelligence, are transforming and amplifying how natural history
collections can be accessed and used (1). These innovations are
substantially broadening the range of possible applications to include
human health, cultural revitalization, and environmental monitoring.
Increasingly, Indigenous interlocuters are joining these conversations
and enriching them (4, 5).
In the past few decades, several networks have increased cooperation
between biodiversity- based institutions around the world. In addition
to GBIF, the Taxonomic Databases Working Group (TDWG), the Global Genome
Biodiversity Network (GGBN), the Catalogue of Life (COL), the Earth
BioGenome Project (EBP), the International Barcode of Life (iBOL), and
the Biodiversity Heritage Library (BHL) have provided global leadership
for integrating specimen data, taxonomic observations, genomes, and
published literature on the natural world. Guiding principles for
governing such data have emerged for traditional [e.g., FAIR (6)] and
nontraditional users [e.g., CARE (4)]. Atlas of Living Australia (ALA)
and Integrated Digitized Biocollections (iDigBio) in the United States
represent successful national programs that develop innovative solutions
to support collection digitization, data integration, and mobilization.
They have fostered integration among stakeholders by making large
datasets readily accessible. Other successful initiatives include the
South African National Biodiversity Institute (SANBI) network,
speciesLink (CRIA) in Brazil, and the National Commission for the
Knowledge and Use of Biodiversity (CONABIO) in Mexico.
Although these institutions and efforts are playing vital roles in
aggregating data, they do not create the collections and fill gaps
therein. It is the natural history museums that actively curate and
expand the collections. Thus, it falls on the museums to lead the way to
deploy strategic collecting in service of future collection and policy
outcomes. It will not be possible to do this unless museums understand
the present scope of the global collection and thus its gaps. Yet
natural history museums have generally operated independently, and no
interoperable data structure exists to provide open access to their
collective holdings. Because most natural history museum data are not
digitally discoverable, the networks of data aggregators have not been
able to access these “dark data” (7), the majority of museum specimens
and objects that are the physical basis of natural history and cultural
knowledge.
As the first step toward building a global network, we worked with the
directors and lead science and collection staff of 73 of the world’s
largest natural history museums and herbaria from 28 countries to design
and complete a simple and rapid survey of their collective holdings (see
the first figure). Until now, it has been difficult to enumerate or
compare the complete contents of large museums because their collections
are not fully digitized, and the terminology used to describe
subcollections is variable. Each of the 73 museums did report a total
specimen count, and the sum of these counts was 1,147,934,687. We then
subdivided this aggregate collection by creating a shared vocabulary for
collection types and their geographic source areas. The result is a grid
of 19 collection types by 16 geographic regions, such that any
collection object from anywhere in the world would fall into only one of
the resulting 304 cells (e.g., African insects; see the second figure).
For this effort, the term “collection unit” represents a single museum’s
holdings within a single cell.
We then worked with expert staff from each museum to estimate the number
of objects in each collection unit to the nearest order of magnitude
(see the second figure). Because it is based on curatorial knowledge of
each collection rather than catalog records, this approach is very rapid
(<2 weeks for most museums). The value of this coarse-grained approach
is that it allows museums to identify their largest collection units and
define the strengths of their collections relative to those at other
museums.
Heat mapping of collection units demonstrates the aggregated effort of
the sampled museums and highlights regional and taxonomic focal areas
and gaps (see the second figure). Most of the collection information
that we surveyed is not digitally accessible: Only 16% of the objects
have digitally discoverable records, and only 0.2% of biological
collections have accessible genomic records.
We also surveyed the size and age distribution of the museum workforce
that studies and cares for collections and that makes them available to
the global community of users and found that the collections at the 73
museums and herbaria were tended by over 4500 science staff and nearly
4000 volunteers. See SM for further details on methods and data.
Activating the Global Collection
Our assessment allowed us to begin to map the aggregate holdings of the
global collection, including the source areas and present locations of
>1 billion objects (see the second figure and figs. S1 and S2). At the
same time, it revealed many gaps, challenges, and opportunities. Work
now needs to happen at a pace and magnitude that will meet the urgency
of the Anthropocene and with the understanding that there are more
species at risk of extinction than are currently known to science. Yet
despite their potential value, natural history collections are at risk.
Fires, natural disasters, and human conflicts can damage and destroy
collections. Less pronounced degradation and destruction occur because
of long-term underinvestment in infrastructure and expertise (1). We
must invest in protecting and preserving these collections, and in
expanding and integrating them, and associated expertise, with focused
collecting efforts and new technologies such as genomics, environmental
DNA, and artificial intelligence.