Transcript Aspects for Improving the ABBI

Aspects for
Improving the
ABBI
Patricia Escalante
Instituto de Biología UNAM
AOU-Collections Committee member
Scientific collections:
Stronger in developed countries thanks to strategies
to send collectors that became foreign residents in
Neotropical countries
Scientific Collections:
different kind of specimens
Frozen bird tissue collections:
began in 1973
(photos from the University of Alaska Museum
and the cryobats for tissues in liquid nitrogen of the
American Museum of Natural History in New York)
Considerations for ABBI
as a biodiversity infrastructure iniciative:
Independent vouchers of barcode
sequences
Proper vouchers:
scientific specimens prepared
according to professional
standards and accessioned into
systematic collections
Feathers or digital
images without
vouchered
specimens are of
less quality and
weak for
infrastructure.
Migratory movements in neotropical
birds are not well identified yet, so
vouchers and breeding individuals for
barcoding are priority. Without them
questionable “cryptic” species could
be indentified
Independent vouchers of
barcode sequences
high quality vouchers are
preferably breeding-locality
specimens accessioned into publicly
available scientific collections
that appropriately preserve
diagnostic features of taxa and
carry full specimen data (e.g.
collecting locality, date, collector,
soft-part colors, body mass).
Legal documentation of specimen provenance
With the Convention of Biological Diversity
countries obtained jurisdiction over
biodiversity resources within their
frontiers
Legal documentation of specimen provenance
Scientific collections have
decades of experience
following these regulations
Long term archival preservation
of tissues and DNA extracts
Archival preservation of tissues and DNA extracts
(protocols)
tissues in liquid nitrogen
purified DNA samples should be housed at the institutions
where the specimen vouchers and raw sample tissues are
housed,
or minimally in an institution that is equiped to house
DNA extract collections, with a clear linkage back to the
original voucher specimen and associated data
Distributed structure/community effort
Distributed structure/community effort
Data and samples should be retained by institutions
that house the permanent voucher specimens
Distributed structure/community effort
Taxonomic data
5 000,000 specimens will
be reachable from more
that 40 institutions
Scientific literature
Gene sequence data
Genomics
Recordings, images,
videos
Stable isotope data
Primary Species’
Occurrence Data
Field notes, other
ancillary information
Parasites etc.
Stomach contents,
etc.
Geospatial data
describing locality
Remote-sensing
data showing
locality in space
and time
Distributed structure/community effort
distributed database of museum specimens and observational database
the raw data is always refered to the owner institution as providers
Sampling design
Museum-based systematists and other
ornithological researchers could embrace ABBI as
an opportunity to create a coordinated network of
tissue collections and DNA extracts of all avian
species.
In conclusion
ABBI
potential for learning about bird systematics
–species limits, species identifications, molecular sequence variation, and
phylogenies
necessary cooperation from the museum community for strategies with a
long term, archival, and distributed point of view.
protocols that recognize the basic tenents of systematics (e.g. repeatability,
vouchering)
Acknowledgement for the
decades-long effort of the critical tissue collections that can contribute to
this collegiate effort
Opportunity for joint fund raising efforts to develop high quality storage
conditions for tissue collections and vouchers in megabiodiversity
countries institutions