A special journal explains the critical importance of biological collections
More than a century ago, when botanists and naturalists were in the field collecting plant and animal specimens, they couldn’t have imagined that scientists would one day be able to extract DNA from samples to understand how plants and animals are related to one another. They couldn’t have imagined that their collections could one day shed light on the effects of global climate change, or the emergence and spread of pathogens, the spread of fungal-driven amphibian extinction, or the effectiveness of policies aimed at reducing pollution in the U.S. And the fact that they couldn’t have predicted those uses, said Emily Meineke, a postdoctoral researcher working in the lab of Charles Davis, professor of organismic and evolutionary biology and director of the Harvard University Herbaria, shows exactly why such collections need to be preserved for future generations. “In 200 years, we have no idea what technology will be available and what people will be...