For centuries, Western naturalists and scientists collected animal species mainly by shooting or other lethal means. And they did it thoughtlessly: museums received hundreds of the same species. Live animals were prized for menageries, but were harder to collect and hard to ship home in good condition, especially in the days of sail. Others collected for the cabinets of curiosities for the wealthy, or simply for anything they could sell.
Sometimes even the scientists were foolish, in that they didn't think enough about the impact of such collection on the populations of rare species. Some of this was ignorance, but it should be obvious that, if it's harder and harder to find specimens, there are fewer to find, and maybe collecting more is not a good idea. We do not, as far as I can find out from books and discussions, have a case where a species was driven to extinction solely by scientific collecting,
One factor in old-style scientific collecting was that it was hard to share specimens at a distance. Shipping them back and forth was chancy, travel was time-consuming, and so on. Illustrations (although many were gorgeous and detailed, and an art form unto themselves) could only fill part of that gap. Before the 20th century, societies for scientific discussion, usually centered around universities and museums, met mostly locally, although transportation improvements continuously improved that situation as railroads and steamships became more common. Another challenge was that, without databases, online discussions, and especially the science and tools of DNA analysis and gene sequencing, there was limited information to derive from feathers, scales, and other castoff or partial specimens that could be collected without harming animals.
Allison Q. Byrne, in this article in PLOS Biology, set off a major round of discussion (as she hoped to) by arguing museums and other institutions should stop collecting whole animals. Not only did modern communications, photography and 3D modeling, and analysis techniques mean we could gather more information from fragmentary specimens, but there was harmful mindset behind whole-animal collecting, "Removing an animal from its natural habitat and killing it for the purpose of storing it in a museum collection reinforces the stance that humans have dominion over other living creatures." "...compassionate collection recognizes the importance of the emotional connection that links human and nonhuman lives..." students on a collecting trip would be excited to see a new specimen but realize "...because they found this creature, it will not live to see another day."
Michael W. Nachman, Elizabeth J. Beckman, Carla Cicero, Chris J. Conroy, Robert Dudley, Tyrone B. Hayes, et. al., (and by et. al. I mean 120 other scientists) just published this response in the same journal. While agreeing specimen collecting should be cautiously done and endorsing other aspects of Byrne's "compassionate collection," they argue she overstated what could be done without whole animals." "...verification of these species requires intensive anatomical analyses that are impossible without whole-organism voucher specimens." They added, "...understanding evolutionary processes often involves the study of large series of voucher specimens that document geographic, temporal, age, or sexual variation in specific traits." DNA and small castoff items like feathers don't allow us to fully study parasites or diseases. They don't allow us to track evolutionary processes.
Byrne responded with this piece arguing the response ignored the "beating heart" of her original essay: her focus on ethics. She argued some of the points about the need for lethal collections, noting for example, "Skin swabs taken from live animals provide for more accurate pathogen detection than those taken after formalin-fixation." It's a short response, though, and she does not engage that in depth. She encourages all scientists involved to think about their ethics and adherence to the status quo.
While I appreciate Byrne's points about our relation to animals, I think Nachman and company are right. Anatomical studies, especially, can only be done with specimens. Modern DNA studies and genome sequencing were developed on collected specimens. Using only the results of those studies means resulting analysis is only completely valid for that animal at a point in time. Collecting should be done only when needed, and as painlessly as possible, but it is necessary.
Matt Bille is a writer, historian, and naturalist living in Colorado Springs. He can be reached at mattsciwriter@protonmail.com. Website: www.mattbilleauthor.com.
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