Science 杂志4 月18 日发表了一篇观点文章，作者指出：科学家没必要采集（杀死）标本放到博物馆去，这会加剧稀有物种的灭绝。这篇文章一发表就受到很多分类学、生物多样性、生态学、进化生物学同行的批评，代表观点认为：该文作者几乎只用濒危脊椎动物来说事儿，很不全面，作者其实不懂什么叫科学采集、分类学和多样性研究（看了这话觉得解气，其实很多所谓的保护学家真不懂什么叫生物多样性研究）。加拿大麦吉尔大学莱曼昆虫博物馆的 Terry Wheeler 写了一篇不错的评论博文。由于他的博客在wordpress （大陆无法访问），俺把他博文贴出来，值得一读。 A fruit fly is not a mammal, and other revelations from the museum Posted on April 18, 2014 (by Terry Wheeler) There’s been a lot of discussion in the past dayabout a new paper published in Science .The paper is an opinion piece about an argument that’s played out many times inthe past, namely: should scientists kill specimens to get them into museumsand collections for future study? (Spoiler alert: yes, they should) The authors argue, from their experience andperspectives in either vertebrate biology or environmental ethics, thatscientific collecting can, and does, contribute to the extinction of rarespecies. They cite examples of such events. They then offer alternatives to thecollection of whole voucher specimens (things like photographs, tissue samples,sound recordings). All perfectly reasonable on the face of it, except thatpretty much any taxonomist or ecologist or evolutionary biologist who makes useof natural history collections for research knows that the proposed solutionsare just not very realistic, oh and that some of their examples aremisinterpreted. In the end, this paper will simply fuel theanti-collecting sentiments espoused by a subset of people who just don’tunderstand how scientific collecting, taxonomy, museum research, or globalbiodiversity really work. Here’s the problem with the authors’ proposedsolutions to the Great Voucher Hunt (well, technically, here are just a few ofthe many problems): 1. The examples highlighted by the authors are avery small subset, are entirely vertebrate centered (except for a singleshout-out to rare plants), and some are misinterpreted. Scientific collectingdid not contribute in any significant way to the extinction of the Great Auk(or many other species). The number of specimens of Great Auks, Dodos,Passenger Pigeons and many other iconic extinct species in museum collectionsis vanishingly small compared to the numbers that were cooked, killed forfeathers, killed for fun, eaten by rats and cats, etc. etc. etc. Blamingscientists for the extinction of species such as the Great Auk is like blamingAlbert Einstein or Marie Curie for Cold War nuclear proliferation. 2. The paper ostensibly focuses on a small andcritical group of (vertebrate) species that are known to be endangered, or wereconsidered extinct and then rediscovered. And yes, it’s right to be concernedabout the long-term prospects for their survival. However, I think that there’sa whole army of other factors we need to be more concerned about (habitat loss,introduced species, pathogens, human activities, climate change) thanscientific collecting . But the authors then extrapolate out to broaderarguments about the desirability of killing for voucher specimens or museumspecimens. Unfortunately, that extrapolation fails because the vast (VAST)majority of species on earth are not in the same category as their examples(even the examples that they got right). 3. Flies are not mammals. Rotifers are notmammals. Neither are fungi, diatoms, nematodes, tardigrades, slime molds,algae, or most other species on the planet. We cannot identify the vastmajority of these species from photographs. We cannot record their sounds. Weusually cannot take a sample of DNA without killing the organism (becausethey’re SMALL). The reality is that in order to document, understand, andimplement conservation strategies (where needed) for most species on thisplanet we have to kill specimens and study them in the lab in order to have anyhope of knowing, with reasonable confidence, what they are. 4. Museums aren’t simply morgues for the longterm storage of dead things. And voucher specimens are not just trophiesfrom our awesome trip to Borneo or Tierra del Fuego. That view is aridiculous caricature. The collection and curation and maintenance ofspecimens in natural history museums is a crucial necessity in documentingbiodiversity. Natural history collections are the source of raw data to addressa vast array of research questions. They are the place where we discover new species,they are the repository of the data that allow us to verify an enormous body ofprevious research. Collections facilitate the great majority of taxonomicresearch. But they do much more than that: collections are the source of datathat allowed us to demonstrate the effect of pesticides on the thickness of eggshells, to document body size changes in species over time as a result ofclimate change, to track the decline and disappearance of some species (and no,NOT by collecting!), and the increase and spread of others. Many excellentauthors in recent years have written about the importance of natural historycollections in broader questions about ecology and evolution. These papers areeasy to find. Collections already take a bit of a beating fromuniversity and museum administrators and funding agencies because of theshocking lack of comprehension about their unique value and contributions toscience. We don’t need more colleagues adding fuel to the fire simply becausethey don’t understand what we do. It’s not that hard to find a natural historycollection, and the people inside are generally a pretty pleasant bunch. Thework we do may be perceived as old-fashioned and unnecessary. That’s wrong. Stopby for a coffee sometime. We’ll be glad to enlighten you. 1. Science 文章：Minteer BA, Collins JP, Love KE, Puschendorf R. 2014. Avoiding(Re)extinction. Science , 344:260-261. 2. Wheeler 博文链接： http://lymanmuseum.wordpress.com/2014/04/18/a-fruit-fly-is-not-a-mammal-and-other-revelations-from-the-museum/
近在网上查询欧美标本馆的模式标本数据库，对研究分类的朋友们可能会有用，与大家分享 英国 K Royal Botanic Gardens, KEW 图片可下载 E Royal Botanic Gardens, Edinburgh 图片很清晰，可在线看，也可下载，但是 TIFF 格式太大了，下载占电脑空间，今天我还给 E 的馆长 Dr. David Harris 建议把图像改成 JPEG 格式。【补充：David Harris告诉我在下载采集记录的同时选择带图片，这样下载的图片是JPEG格式，不足1M，我试了一下，很方便的】 BM Natural History Museum 现在还看不到图像，上周到 BM 看标本，问了一下，扫描了不少图像，可能近期会上网。 LINN The Linnean Colletions 图片不可下载， 只能在线看，图像光线太暗，效果不太好。 法国： P Museum National d'Histore Naturelle 是法语数据库，图片可下载 意大利： FI NATURAL HISTORY MUSEUM 图像质量不错 PAL HerbariumMediterraneum Panormitanum ， 图像比 FI 差一点。 比利时： BR NationalBotanic Garden of Belgium ， 图像非常清晰。 荷兰： NHN National Herbarium of The Netherlands 图像不够清晰，就象罩了一层面纱。 奥地利： WU W Institute of Botany, University of Vienna 两个标本馆的数据库在一块儿。 瑞士： G Conservatoire et Jardin botaniques de la Ville de Genève 图像效果不错，但是只能在线查看，不能下载。A. P. De Candolle和Boissier的模式基本上都在这个标本馆。 瑞典： S weden's V irtual H erbarium UPS Museum of Evolution, Uppsala University 没有图像 Thunberg's Japanese Specimens 德国： 基本上都在 GBIF （ The Global BiodiversityInformation Facility ）上了，查询不够简洁，我不太喜欢。标本数据库可以与其他数据库建立关系链接，GBIF包罗万象，标本数据库在上面不太好找。 北欧标本数据库： V irtuella H erbariet ，包括北欧20多个标本馆的馆藏数据，但是只有模式标本才有图像，图像很清晰。 美国： MO Missouri Botanical Garden , tropicos上面的数据库很多，很实用。 NY: The New York Botanical Garden 应该是全球最早的模式标本图像数据库，图像质量也不错。 HUH Herbaria of Harvard University 只有文字，没有图像，有点奇怪，他们做数字化很多年了。 US － NMNH Smithonian National Museum of National History 看大图太慢。 总体来说，国外的标本数据库在近年来发展很快，图像也越来越清晰。中国是最早进行标本数字化的国家之一，但是由于保守的观念，放在网络上的图像基本上是看不清楚的，我也在反思，为什么我们不能大度地把高质量的图像放在网络上共享？而是压缩后的图像，是硬件因素还是人的认识问题？可能这也是由于中国人的保守，从而在很多领域都不能率领全球。如果你需要模式标本照片，国际上各大标本馆都很乐意寄给你高清晰度的照片来代替借阅模式标本，以达到保护模式标本的目的。 新增 莫斯科大学标本馆数据库 中国台湾的数据库链接 台湾本土植物数据库-- HAST , TAI 日本 Makino Herbarium Tokyo Metropolitan University （首都大学东京） Museum of Tokyo University（TI） （东京大学） National Museum of Nature and Science Collection Database of Specimens and Materials Siebold's Plant Collection Flora of Nepal Database(Seed plants) Flora of Nepal Database(Ferns and its allies)
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