scholarly journals The unrealized potential of herbaria for global change biology

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Emily K. Meineke ◽  
Charles C. Davis ◽  
T. Jonathan Davies
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Global Change ◽  
Insect Herbivory ◽  
Biodiversity Loss ◽  
Future Research ◽  
Physiological Processes ◽  
Global Change Research ◽  
Herbarium Data ◽  
Habitat Conversion ◽  
Few Data

AbstractPlant and fungal specimens in herbaria are becoming primary resources for investigating how plant phenology and geographic distributions shift with climate change, greatly expanding inferences across spatial, temporal, and phylogenetic dimensions. However, these specimens contain a wealth of additional data—including nutrients, defensive compounds, herbivore damage, disease lesions, and signatures of physiological processes—that capture ecological and evolutionary responses to the Anthropocene but which are less frequently utilized. Here, we outline the diversity of herbarium data, global change topics to which they have been applied, and new hypotheses they could inform. We find that herbarium data have been used extensively to study impacts of climate change and invasive species, but that such data are less commonly used to address other drivers of biodiversity loss, including habitat conversion, pollution, and overexploitation. In addition, we note that fungal specimens are under-explored relative to vascular plants. To facilitate broader application of plant and fungal specimens in global change research, we outline the limitations of these data and modern sampling and statistical tools that may be applied to surmount challenges they present. Using a case study of insect herbivory, we illustrate how novel herbarium data may be employed to test hypotheses for which few data exist, despite potentially large biases. With the goal of positioning herbaria as hubs for global change research, we suggest future research directions and curation priorities.

scholarly journals Expert opinion on extinction risk and climate change adaptation for biodiversity

Elem Sci Anth ◽  
2015 ◽  
Vol 3 ◽  
Author(s):  
Debra Javeline ◽  
Jessica J. Hellmann ◽  
Jason S. McLachlan ◽  
Dov F. Sax ◽  
Mark W. Schwartz ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Extinction Risk ◽  
Biodiversity Loss ◽  
Adaptation Strategy ◽  
Ex Situ ◽  
Managed Relocation ◽  
Terrestrial Insects ◽  
Few Data ◽  
Taxonomic Groups ◽  
Average Projection

Abstract Despite projections of biodiversity loss and proposed adaptations to climate change, few data exist on the feasibility and effectiveness of adaptation strategies in minimizing biodiversity loss. Given the urgent need for action, scientific experts can fill critical information gaps by providing rapid and discerning risk assessment. A survey of 2,329 biodiversity experts projects, on average, that 9.5% of species will become extinct due to climate change within the next 100 years. This average projection is low relative to previously published values but substantial in absolute terms, because it amounts to a loss of hundreds of thousands of species over the next century. The average projection increases to 21% when experts are asked to estimate the percentage of species that will become extinct within the next 100 years due to climate change in combination with other causes. More than three-quarters of respondents reported being uncertain about their extinction estimates. A majority of experts preferred protected areas or corridors to reduce extinction risk but identified ex situ conservation and no intervention as the most feasible strategies. Experts also suggest that managed relocation of species, a particular adaptation strategy, is justifiable and effective in some situations but not others. Justifiable circumstances include the prevention of species extinction and overcoming human-made barriers to dispersal, and while experts are divided on the potential effectiveness of managed relocation for most taxonomic groups, higher percentages predict it effective for woody plants, terrestrial insects, and mammals. Most experts are open to the potential benefits of managed relocation but are concerned about unintended harmful consequences, particularly putting non-target species at risk of extinction. On balance, published biodiversity scientists feel that managed relocation, despite controversy about it, can be part of the conservation adaptation portfolio.

scholarly journals Applying computer vision to digitised natural history collections for climate change research: temperature-size responses in British butterflies

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rebecca J Wilson ◽  
Alexandre F de Siqueira ◽  
Stephen J Brooks ◽  
Benjamin W Price ◽  
Lea M Simon ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Computer Vision ◽  
Natural History ◽  
Global Change ◽  
Adult Size ◽  
Phenotypic Data ◽  
Climate Change Research ◽  
Biotic Response ◽  
Natural History Collections ◽  
Global Change Research

Natural history collections (NHCs) are invaluable resources for understanding biotic response to global change. Museums around the world are currently imaging specimens, capturing specimen data, and making them freely available online. In parallel to the digitisation effort, there have been great advancements in computer vision (CV): the computer trained automated recognition/detection, and measurement of features in digital images. Applying CV to digitised NHCs has the potential to greatly accelerate the use of NHCs for biotic response to global change research. In this paper, we apply CV to a very large, digitised collection to test hypotheses in an established area of biotic response to climate change research: temperature-size responses. We develop a CV pipeline (Mothra) and apply it to the NHM iCollections of British butterflies (>180,000 specimens). Mothra automatically detects the specimen in the image, sets the scale, measures wing features (e.g., forewing length), determines the orientation of the specimen (pinned ventrally or dorsally), and identifies the sex. We pair these measurements and meta-data with temperature records to test how adult size varies with temperature during the immature stages of species and to assess patterns of sexual-size dimorphism across species and families. Mothra accurately measures the forewing lengths of butterfly specimens and compared to manual baseline measurements, Mothra accurately determines sex and forewing lengths of butterfly specimens. Females are the larger sex in most species and an increase in adult body size with warm monthly temperatures during the late larval stages is the most common temperature size response. These results confirm suspected patterns and support hypotheses based on recent studies using a smaller dataset of manually measured specimens. We show that CV can be a powerful tool to efficiently and accurately extract phenotypic data from a very large collection of digital NHCs. In the future, CV will become widely applied to digital NHC collections to advance ecological and evolutionary research and to accelerate the use of NHCs for biotic response to global change research.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document