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      On specimen killing in the era of conservation crisis – A quantitative case for modernizing taxonomy and biodiversity inventories

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          Abstract

          Background to the work

          For centuries taxonomy has relied on dead animal specimens, a practice that persists today despite the emergence of innovative biodiversity assessment methods. Taxonomists and conservationists are engaged in vigorous discussions over the necessity of killing animals for specimen sampling, but quantitative data on taxonomic trends and specimen sampling over time, which could inform these debates, are lacking.

          Methods

          We interrogated a long-term research database documenting 2,723 land vertebrate and 419 invertebrate taxa from Madagascar, and their associated specimens conserved in the major natural history museums. We further compared specimen collection and species description rates for the birds, mammals and scorpions over the last two centuries, to identify trends and links to taxon descriptions.

          Results

          We located 15,364 specimens documenting endemic mammals and 11,666 specimens documenting endemic birds collected between 1820 and 2010. Most specimens were collected at the time of the Mission Zoologique Franco-Anglo-Américaine (MZFAA) in the 1930s and during the last two decades, with major differences according to the groups considered. The small mammal and bat collections date primarily from recent years, and are paralleled by the description of new species. Lemur specimens were collected during the MZFAA but the descriptions of new taxa are recent, with the type series limited to non-killed specimens. Bird specimens, particularly of non-passerines, are mainly from the time of the MZFAA. The passerines have also been intensely collected during the last two decades; the new material has been used to solve the phylogeny of the groups and only two new endemic taxa of passerine birds have been described over the last two decades.

          Conclusions

          Our data show that specimen collection has been critical for advancing our understanding of the taxonomy of Madagascar’s biodiversity at the onset of zoological work in Madagascar, but less so in recent decades. It is crucial to look for alternatives to avoid killing animals in the name of documenting life, and encourage all efforts to share the information attached to historical and recent collections held in natural history museums. In times of conservation crisis and the advancement in digital technologies and open source sharing, it seems obsolete to kill animals in well-known taxonomic groups for the sake of enriching natural history collections around the world.

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          Most cited references80

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          Specimen collection: an essential tool.

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            A DNA ‘Barcode Blitz’: Rapid Digitization and Sequencing of a Natural History Collection

            DNA barcoding protocols require the linkage of each sequence record to a voucher specimen that has, whenever possible, been authoritatively identified. Natural history collections would seem an ideal resource for barcode library construction, but they have never seen large-scale analysis because of concerns linked to DNA degradation. The present study examines the strength of this barrier, carrying out a comprehensive analysis of moth and butterfly (Lepidoptera) species in the Australian National Insect Collection. Protocols were developed that enabled tissue samples, specimen data, and images to be assembled rapidly. Using these methods, a five-person team processed 41,650 specimens representing 12,699 species in 14 weeks. Subsequent molecular analysis took about six months, reflecting the need for multiple rounds of PCR as sequence recovery was impacted by age, body size, and collection protocols. Despite these variables and the fact that specimens averaged 30.4 years old, barcode records were obtained from 86% of the species. In fact, one or more barcode compliant sequences (>487 bp) were recovered from virtually all species represented by five or more individuals, even when the youngest was 50 years old. By assembling specimen images, distributional data, and DNA barcode sequences on a web-accessible informatics platform, this study has greatly advanced accessibility to information on thousands of species. Moreover, much of the specimen data became publically accessible within days of its acquisition, while most sequence results saw release within three months. As such, this study reveals the speed with which DNA barcode workflows can mobilize biodiversity data, often providing the first web-accessible information for a species. These results further suggest that existing collections can enable the rapid development of a comprehensive DNA barcode library for the most diverse compartment of terrestrial biodiversity – insects.
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              21 years of shelf life between discovery and description of new species.

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                Author and article information

                Contributors
                Role: ConceptualizationRole: Formal analysisRole: InvestigationRole: MethodologyRole: SupervisionRole: ValidationRole: VisualizationRole: Writing – original draftRole: Writing – review & editing
                Role: ValidationRole: Writing – original draft
                Role: Data curationRole: Formal analysisRole: MethodologyRole: ResourcesRole: ValidationRole: Writing – original draftRole: Writing – review & editing
                Role: ConceptualizationRole: Data curationRole: Formal analysisRole: InvestigationRole: MethodologyRole: SupervisionRole: ValidationRole: VisualizationRole: Writing – original draftRole: Writing – review & editing
                Role: Editor
                Journal
                PLoS One
                PLoS ONE
                plos
                plosone
                PLoS ONE
                Public Library of Science (San Francisco, CA USA )
                1932-6203
                13 September 2017
                2017
                : 12
                : 9
                : e0183903
                Affiliations
                [1 ] ETH Zurich, Department of ITES, Forest Management and Development (ForDev) Group, Universitätstrasse 16, Zurich, Switzerland
                [2 ] Durrell Institute of Conservation and Ecology (DICE), University of Kent, Canterbury, United Kingdom
                [3 ] Muséum national d’Histoire naturelle, Sorbonne Universités, Institut de Systématique, Evolution, Biodiversité (ISYEB), UMR7205-CNRS, MNHN, UPMC, EPHE, CP 53, 57 rue Cuvier, Paris, France
                [4 ] Missouri Botanical Garden, Madagascar Research & Conservation Program, BP, Antananarivo 101, Madagascar
                [5 ] World Resources Institute, Washington, D.C., United States of America
                Tierarztliche Hochschule Hannover, GERMANY
                Author notes

                Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.

                Author information
                http://orcid.org/0000-0002-8344-1957
                Article
                PONE-D-17-17670
                10.1371/journal.pone.0183903
                5597100
                28902889
                485def91-2672-4a9f-bd17-c54f956030f9
                © 2017 Waeber et al

                This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

                History
                : 9 May 2017
                : 14 August 2017
                Page count
                Figures: 2, Tables: 2, Pages: 16
                Funding
                The authors received no specific funding for this work.
                Categories
                Research Article
                Biology and Life Sciences
                Organisms
                Animals
                Vertebrates
                Amniotes
                Birds
                Biology and Life Sciences
                Organisms
                Animals
                Vertebrates
                Amniotes
                Mammals
                Research and Analysis Methods
                Research Facilities
                Museum Collections
                Biology and Life Sciences
                Organisms
                Animals
                Invertebrates
                Arthropoda
                Arachnida
                Scorpions
                Biology and Life Sciences
                Ecology
                Biodiversity
                Ecology and Environmental Sciences
                Ecology
                Biodiversity
                Biology and Life Sciences
                Taxonomy
                Animal Taxonomy
                Computer and Information Sciences
                Data Management
                Taxonomy
                Animal Taxonomy
                Biology and Life Sciences
                Zoology
                Animal Taxonomy
                Biology and Life Sciences
                Taxonomy
                New Species Reports
                Computer and Information Sciences
                Data Management
                Taxonomy
                New Species Reports
                Biology and Life Sciences
                Organisms
                Animals
                Vertebrates
                Amniotes
                Mammals
                Primates
                Prosimians
                Lemurs
                Custom metadata
                All relevant data are within the paper and its Supporting Information files.

                Uncategorized
                Uncategorized

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