A thorough assessment of biodiversity requires an historical perspective so that managers can fully evaluate current resource conditions and changes that have occurred. To gain that perspective we must compile the available biological information, most of which is located within natural history collections in the world's museums and herbaria. However, there is a widespread disregard for natural history collections and their value (Cotteril 1995), the information is often difficult to access, and museums have not done a good job of marketing their services (Cotteril 1997). In fact, museums and their collections are considered a mystery to many outside the museum environment. To date, research on collections has focused on estimating species richness and diversity, documenting species declines, mapping species distributions, and determining areas of conservation importance. Little work, however, has been devoted to the efficient retrieval of the full complement of specimen records available and the role and contribution of scientific collecting. Thus, we attempt to examine these issues. This work was funded by the Inventory and Monitoring Program of the Northeast Region of the National Park Service.

• Establish a natural history collections-based set of biodiversity data (mammals, reptiles, amphibians, and vascular plants) for 14 national parks throughout the northeast.
  
  
• Develop strategies for searching natural history collections to detect specimens originating within and around national parks. Estimate the cost of searching for and finding individual specimen records.
  
  
• Evaluate trends in scientific collecting during the 20th century site and factors that influenced collecting effort.
  
  

• Identify natural history collections, institutions, and contact personnel.
  
  
• Request collection information using mailings, personal contacts, web-based searches, and environmental list-serves.
  
  
• Search collections manually and electronically (if available).
  
  
• Categorize data on specimens by proximity to park boundaries: 1 - definitely located within park boundaries, 2 - may be within park boundaries, 3 - located within county where park is located, 4 - located within state where park is located (best available information).
  
  
• Used Microsoft Access to establish database on institutions, collections, and contact personnel; used Microsoft Excel to establish database on specimen information: institution, taxa, nomenclature, common name, locality, collector, date collected, age, sex, parts/preparation, remarks, type status, latitude & longitude, and elevation.
  
  

• 274 collection managers (299 collections) were contacted and eight state natural heritage programs.
  
  
• 22 collections were searched, 10 via the Internet and 12 manually (randomly selected and grouped by size of collection).
  
  
• 30,000 specimens were identified as originating within and around 14 northeastern national parks.
  
  
• Specimen records were found for all parks. The greatest number of specimens were generally collected within the largest parks and placed in collections in the region of interest. However, specimens also were placed in museums around the world.
  
  
• Scientific collecting declined corresponding to significant sociopolitical events (e.g., wars, Great Depression).
  
  
• Cost of manual searches ranged from and average of $0.03/specimen searched to $24.15/ specimen found.
  
  
• Inverse relationship detected between number of records located and the size of the collection searched (as the size of the collection increased the number of specimens decreased).
  
  
• Number of records located increased exponentially with the size of the park.
  
  

Table 1. National parks searched for vertebrate and vascular plant voucher specimens. National Park (Code) State(s) Size (Ac) Year Est.   Acadia National Park (ACAD) ME 46784 1916   Marsh-Billings-Rockefeller National Historical Park (MABI) VT 555 1992   Minute Man National Historical Park (MIMA) MA 967 1959   Morristown National Historical Park (MORR) NJ 1685 1933   Roosevelt-Vanderbilt National Historic Site (ROVA)1 NY 683 1940   Saint-Gaudens National Historic Site (SAGA) NH 150 1964   Saugus Iron Works National Historic Site (SAIR) MA 9 1968   Saratoga National Historical Park (SARA) NY 3406 1938   Weir Farm National Historic Site (WEFA) CT 60 1990   Assateague Island National Seashore (ASIS) MD 39732 1965   Cape Cod National Seashore (CACO) MA 43604 1961   Fire Island National Seashore (FIIS) NY 19580 1981   Gateway National Recreation Area (GATE) NY,NJ 26610 1972   Sagamore Hill National Historic Site (SAHI) NY 83 1963    1 ROVA was consolidated from Eleanor Roosevelt National Historic Site (ELRO, est. 1977, 181 ac), Home of Franklin D. Roosevelt National Historic Site (HOFR, est. 1945, 290 ac) and, Vanderbilt Mansion National Historic Site (VAMA, est. 1940, 212 ac).

 

Table 2. The number of specimen records located in each proximity category for all parks.   Number of specimen records1        Park code Category 1 Category 2 Category 3 Category 4 Total (%)2 ACAD 3,392 1,223 7,739 149 12,503 (40.6) MABI 1 199 273 20 493 (1.6) MIMA 72 408 1,797 78 2,355 (7.6) MORR 0 119 905 46 1070 (3.5) ROVA 237 4 251 485 977 (3.2) SAGA 0 10 102 19 131 (0.4) SAIR 0 17 722 0 739 (2.4) SARA 180 6 115 423 724 (2.3) WEFA 12 15 983 8 1,018 (3.3) ASIS 471 1 197 3 672 (2.2) CACO 186 1,994 1806 6 3,992 (12.9) FIIS 109 276 4,026 0 4,411 (14.3) GATE 30 277 1,107 75 1,489 (4.8) SAHI 55 3 201 0 259 (0.8) Total (%) 4,745 15.4) 4,552 (14.8) 20,224 (65.6) 1,312 (4.3) 30,833 1 Category 1 = within park boundaries, 2 = may be within park boundaries, 3 = in county, 4 = in state. 2 Totals are reduced by 277 specimens (0.89%), because we were unable to identify current locality based on a historic place name, there were discrepancies in the locality data, or they could not be assigned to any one park.

 

Figure 1. Distribution by decade of the number of biological specimens linked to 14 national parks in the northeastern United States that were located in museum and herbaria collections. Vertical dashed line represents a period when natural history field surveys were declining along with a marked increase in a quantitative approach to the biological sciences.

 

Table 3. Results of manual searches of herbaria and vertebrate collections.   Cost per specimenc ($)   Collection searched No. specimens in collection (category)a % collection searchedb Search time (hours) No. specimens found Searched Found Herbaria Mary Washington College Herbarium 5,000 (small) 100 4 1 $0.03 $151.95 Norton Brown Herbarium, University of Maryland 67,000 (medium) 33 16 288 $0.01 $0.81 A. C. Moore Herbarium, University of South Carolina 85,000 (medium) 100 24 54 $0.01 $22.57 The Bell Museum of Natural History, University of Minnesota Herbarium 818,000 (large) 17 32 50 $0.01 $33.22 Harvard University Herbaria 5,000,000 (large) 2 32 817 $0.01 $0.10   Vertebrate Peggy Notebaert Nature Museum, Chicago Academy of Sciences (reptiles, amphibians) 20,000 (small) 25 2 16 $0.06 $19.20 Northeastern University (vertebrates)d 42,000 (medium) 5 4 148 $0.15 $2.16 Museum of Comparative Zoology, Harvard University (birds) 338,000 (large) 66 24 504 <$0.01 $1.45 The Natural History Museum, London (birds) 2,500,000 (large) 90 24 461 <$0.01 $2.96 The Natural History Museum, London (mammals) 359,000 (large) 100 8 178 <$0.01 $6.08 a Collections were separated into three size categories: small <= 30,000 specimens , medium ,<= 195,000 specimens, and large > 195,000 specimens. b Estimated percentage of collection searched for herbaria is based on the number of cabinets searched. Estimates for Chicago depend on the number of rows of specimens searched, for Northeastern on the number of cabinet drawers and catalog numbers, and for Harvard on catalog numbers. We received help searching from two other people at Chicago and one other at Northeastern. c Cost includes travel to the museum, per diem, lodging, and salary for one technician.

 

Figure 2. The natural log of the number of museum specimens originating within current park boundaries or local townships where the park was located versus the natural log size of the park with which they are associated.

 

Figure 3. The relationship between detection rate for specimens located and size of the collection searched. Three collections with >1 million specimens (two with near-zero and one with moderate [495] detection rates) and two small (<42,000 specimens) collections with very large detection rates (>6,000) are not included on this figure.

 

Figure 4. Plant species diversity for Acadia National Park plotting the number of voucher specimens identified (category 1 & 2) using the program EstimateS 6. Results are based on actual observations (Sobs) and eight numerical estimators. A detailed description of the individual estimators in located in: Colwell, R. K. 2001. EstimateS: Statistical estimation of species richness and shared species from samples. Version 6.0b1. User’s Guide and application published at: http://viceroy.eeb.uconn.edu/estimates.

• Scientific collecting has declined since the 1980's. This may be attributed to the evolution of our technical capacity toward a more quantitative approach in the natural sciences, patterns of scientific exploration, and museum traditions of accepting specimens.
  
  
• Manual searches can be effective, but based on cost alone, searching and finding specimens may be a scientific task that is difficult to justify.
  
  
• More specimens were generally located originating within larger parks established for their natural resources, but smaller historical parks can be a focal point for biological collecting – a site’s location and cultural history (e.g., Minute Man NHP) are important factors to consider when undertaking searches.
  
  
• Efforts at searching collections should consider a two-pronged approach: manual searches at local or regional collections and (if available) electronic searches at large museums with collections international in scope.
  
  

Cotteril, F. P. D. 1995. Systematics, biological knowledge, and environmental conservation. Biodiversity and Conservation 4:183-205.

Cotteril, F. P. D. 1997. The second Alexandrian tragedy, and the fundamental relationship between biological collections and scientific knowledge. Pages 227-241 in J. R. Nudds and C. W. Pettit, editors. The value and valuation of natural science collections. Proceedings of the international conference, 1995. Chapman and Hall, London.

O'Connell, A. F. Jr., A. T. Gilbert, and J. S. Hatfield. Contribution of natural history collection data to biodiversity assessment in national parks. Conservation Biology. In press.

Gilbert, A. T. and A. F. O'Connell, Jr. Retrieval, Compilation, and Organization of Vertebrate and Vascular Plant Voucher Specimens Originating from National Parks. Proceedings of the 12th George Wright Society Conference “Protecting Our Diverse Heritage: The Role of Parks, Protected Areas, and Cultural Sites”. San Diego, CA. In press.