11 November 2008

Museums and private collections of insect and other specimens are a huge and important biodiversity resource.

Someone looking over my shoulder when I was curating some of the specimens in my Victorian Lepidoptera collection the other day rather dismissively remarked, "Oh - just dead insects". Understandable, but on reflection we should realise just how important these collections and records are. The history and recording of biological diversity they represent is both valuable and extraordinary. In the particular collection of macro-moths I was curating at the time, not only do the labels tell us the common and scientific name of the species, but also the identity of the collector, the location in which it was found, and the date.

There has been a great revival if biological recording in recent times, and the knowledge we are gaining today, assembled, computerised, searchable and universally available as it is, is a resource par excellence. Work by the many recorders and researchers in museums and other institutions enables us to create a detailed picture of the dynamic assemblages of taxa over time - a great asset when considering the re-establishment of species and ecological communities, for example.

Christopher Betts