[Nhcoll-l] Why retain physical specimens

[Kareen Schnabel]

Dear Sarah,
A familiar question, and it is hard to find the champions at the higher levels who understand collections. Related to your question, here is a link to the correspondence article we signed in 2017, a rebuttal to Garraffoni & Freitas (2017) who argue that images could be designated primary types. We make our case against it.

Rogers, D. C., Shane T. Ahyong, Christopher B. Boyko & Cédric d'Udekem d'Acoz. 2017. Images are not and should not ever be type specimens: a rebuttal to Garraffoni & Freitas. Zootaxa 4269(4): 455–459.
https://doi.org/10.11646/zootaxa.4269.4.3
http://zoobank.org/urn:lsid:zoobank.org:pub:EFAE2360-00AA-4E64-BC97-1022E4BAACDE

I don’t recall whether this list allows attachments, I can send the paper to whoever might not have access to it.
Ngā mihi nui
Kareen

An excerpt with a point I haven’t seen in the string yet here:
While our main concern pertains to data quality and reproducibility, fraud is also a potential problem. Photographs and similar images are derivative of the actual organism and too easily manipulated; hence, they should not be made the primary standards. The issue is not new. John James Audubon intentionally made images of imaginary fish and mammals, which Rafinesque (1818, 1820) unwittingly described as new species (Markle 1997; Woodman 2016). Although not taxonomic in content, examples of altered images include those from two papers retracted from Science (McNutt 2014) and "enhanced" images of collembolans supposedly living in human skin (Christiansen & Bernard 2008, Shelomi 2013). Recently, two variants of the same photograph were discovered to be published in two different books (d'Udekem d'Acoz & Verheye in press); one was obviously correct and the other skilfully manipulated, presumably in order "to repair" a structure that the authors erroneously believed to have been broken. Should photographs be allowed as types, the very definition of the identity of newly described species may be compromised, either intentionally or unintentionally (see also Aguiar et al. 2017).
Photographs and other images are useful, important, and excellent tools. Photographs can serve as proxys for the types (as many old illustrations do) and aid in their interpretation. Photographs and video recordings, however, cannot and should not BE type specimens. Biological type specimens must exist in actual, not virtual reality

From: Nhcoll-l <nhcoll-l-bounces at mailman.yale.edu> On Behalf Of Sarah K. Huber
Sent: Friday, 27 September 2019 6:00 AM
To: nhcoll-l at mailman.yale.edu
Subject: [Nhcoll-l] Why retain physical specimens

Recently I’ve been fielding a lot of questions about why our collection should retain a physical specimen once it has been digitized (e.g., CT-scanned, photographed, x-rayed, etc.). I’m curious how often other museum professionals are asked this question and what your general responses are for justifying the retention of a physical specimen. Why do you tell people it’s important to retain a specimen?

If anyone knows of article that have addressed this specific question I would appreciate references so that I can have them on hand for particularly curious visitors.

Thanks,
Sarah

Sarah K. Huber, Ph.D.
Curatorial Associate, VIMS Nunnally Ichthyology Collection
Office 804.684.7104 | Collection 804.684.7285
skhuber at vims.edu<mailto:skhuber at vims.edu> | http://www.vims.edu/research/facilities/fishcollection/index.php
PO Box 1346 | 1370 Greate Rd., Gloucester Pt., VA 23062

[https://www.niwa.co.nz/static/niwa-2018-horizontal-180.png]<https://www.niwa.co.nz>
Dr Kareen Schnabel
Marine Biologist

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