Integrated use of enhanced natural history collections is key to solve the biodiversity crisis

Global biodiversity loss is arguably the biggest problem facing humanity. Climate change, changes in land and sea use and other factors are synergistically eroding biodiversity to an unprecedented speed and extent, with cascading impacts on humanity and our livelihoods. Scientific advice on safeguarding biodiversity depends on all available information to understand past and current developments, and predict future responses of Earth’s ecosystems. This challenge requires integrative research across space, time, methods, and taxa, and integration of these data into a new generation of biodiversity models. Such research is currently thwarted because biodiversity data are stored in different formats and databases, and the largest sources of biodiversity data are still contained in physical repositories that are not fully accessible: collections of geological and biological specimens. To overcome this shortfall, natural history collections must be developed into specimen-based, integrated, and digitally accessible research platforms. We propose that a new conceptual framework, Collectomics, is required to underpin this vision; this aegis embraces the entirety of collection-based research, although we focus here on how it enables and fuels the research necessary to effectively confront the Anthropocene biodiversity crisis. Current technological developments provide an unprecedented opportunity to unleash the full potential of collections by fully integrating the myriad data dimensions from collection objects (manuscript submitted to PNAS on 6th April 2021, full manuscript available for download).

Download Metadata as EML

Dataset DOI: doi:10.12761/sgn.2021.04.1

Data and Resources

Additional Info

Field Value
Other info
Last Updated June 23, 2021, 08:15 (UTC)
Created April 27, 2021, 10:43 (UTC)

Responsible parties

Creator and point of contact
Name Julia D. Sigwart
Organization affiliations
Senckenberg Research Institute and Natural History Museum, Department of Marine Zoology

Frankfurt am Main
Germany

Role

Creator
Name Matthias Schleuning
Organization affiliations
Senckenberg Biodiversity Climate Research Center (SBiK-F)

Frankfurt am Main
Germany

Creator
Name Angelika Brandt
Organization affiliations
Senckenberg Research Institute and Natural History Museum, Department of Marine Zoology

Frankfurt am Main
Germany

Institute for Ecology, Evolution and Diversity, Goethe-University of Frankfurt

Frankfurt am Main
Germany

Creator
Name Markus Pfenninger
Organization affiliations
Senckenberg Biodiversity Climate Research Center (SBiK-F)

Frankfurt am Main
Germany

LOEWE Centre for Translational Biodiversity Genomics

Frankfurt am Main
Germany

Creator
Organization affiliations
Senckenberg Collectomics Consortium

Creator
Organization affiliations
Senckenberg - Community Ecology and Macroecology

Creator
Organization affiliations
Senckenberg - Molecular Ecology

Research data management planning

Data will be stored at (long-term archived) Information still missing

Link to this dataset:

https://doi.org/10.12761/sgn.2021.04.1