Doing Natural History

Where did all those dead animals come from? What are they used for? These are questions that natural history museums must be prepared to answer. Specimen collections are a valuable research tool, but their utility remains a mystery to many. In this article, we introduce the Web exhibit “Doing Natura...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Bioscience 2012-09, Vol.62 (9), p.824-829
Main Authors: Sunderland, Mary E, Klitz, Karen, Yoshihara, Kristine
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Animal behavior
Animals
Barriers
Biodiversity
Biological Sciences
Biology in History
collections
DEPARTMENTS
education
Educational Resources
Evolution
Evolutionary biology
Exhibits
Field notes
Geography
Graduate Students
Indexing in process
integrative biology
Life sciences
museum
Museum exhibits
Museums
Natural history
Natural history museums
Research Tools
Species
Specimens
Studies
Vertebrates
Zoology
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Summary:Where did all those dead animals come from? What are they used for? These are questions that natural history museums must be prepared to answer. Specimen collections are a valuable research tool, but their utility remains a mystery to many. In this article, we introduce the Web exhibit “Doing Natural History” (http://mvz.berkeley.edu/DoingNaturalHistory) as an educational resource that draws connections between early twentieth-century evolutionary biology and innovative museum science today. As a companion to the Web exhibit, in this article, we show how natural history research changed during the twentieth century and argue that collections have provided the basis for innovation in natural history, integrative biology, and, more generally, in the life sciences. Drawing on examples from the University of California, Berkeley', Museum of Vertebrate Zoology, we look at the practice of natural history to reveal the centrality of collections to both practice and theory in the life sciences.
ISSN:0006-3568
1525-3244
DOI:10.1525/bio.2012.62.9.8