Natural History Collections as a fundamental research tool – A case study using Portuguese vertebrate collections

STUDENT SEMINAR IN BIODIVERSITY AND EVOLUTION

Natural History Collections (NHCs) are an essential tool for modern research and the world's greatest repositories of biodiversity data. Recent studies have highlighted the global decline in collecting and specimen accession in the last few decades, a trend that may be exacerbated at local level. Using Portuguese terrestrial vertebrate collections as case study, we aimed to showcase the impact that a lack of vouchered specimens can bring upon in the knowledge of a country's biodiversity though time. We particularly focused on understanding if the country's main NHCs had 1) a complete coverage of all species occurring in Portugal; 2) if the available specimens reflected their known geographic distribution; and 3) if the specimens constituted a good time-series of their given species. Assessments for each vertebrate group (amphibians and reptiles, mammals, birds, and freshwater fish) were carried out separately and exhibited similar patterns. The collections are not taxonomically, geographically, nor temporally complete and are clearly biased towards the interests and research focus of their associated researchers, depending on them for the few new deposits in the last few years. This seminar will present the results for each vertebrate group, as well as a general overview of all terrestrial vertebrates known from Portugal. 

Bruna Santos is a biologist and BIODIV PhD student in the NATHIST research group at BIOPOLIS/CIBIO-InBIO. Her primary research interests are natural history collection (NHCs) specimen-based research, history of science, and collection management. As her PhD project, she has focused on the importance of NHCs for present-day biodiversity studies, using Portuguese vertebrates as a case study. She previously developed her MSc thesis on the revision of historical naturalists’ expeditions to Angola and participated in other NHCs associated research projects.