[Nhcoll-l] [EXT]Re: How many specimens

Thu Mar 17 15:57:05 EDT 2022

Lennart,

This is an interesting question, one that we (at CMN) tried to addressed a few years ago.

I personally don’t like to refer to “number of specimens” in our collections since we don’t typically manage the number of specimens but rather the lots. Two fish samples with 10 and 20 specimens are pretty much managed the same way. But still, being a curator of invertebrate collections, it is difficult to properly express as a number the amount of copepods in a plankton sample (whether it is sorted by species or maintained as a faunal assemblage).

However, the “total number of specimens” in collection is a value that is often used to represent the size of collections and to some extent, to give non-museum people a sense of how big natural history collections can be in comparison to an art museum, as an example. For that reason, our museum used to boast 10.4 millions specimens in our collections, a value calculated in the late 1990’s but without any indication of how that value was obtained.

In 2016, we though it would be a good exercise to update that estimate and record the process so that it can be more easily updated in the future. We now have (or more precisely, state that we have) 14.6 millions specimens/objects in our collections, a number that we frequently use in our communication with government, the general public and potential donors to provide a reference in terms of magnitude.

To reach that number, we needed to make a number of assumptions. These assumptions made sense at the time, and may not be the same as the one made explicitly or implicitly by other large museums like the Smithsonian (“more than 146 million objects and specimens”), the Natural History Museum (“some 80 million items”), or the Muséum national d’histoire naturel de Paris (“au total, 68 millions”).

Assumptions and working principles the CMN collections:

  *   For collections like pinned insects, which typically work with single specimens as a unit, we estimated of the total number of specimens. Subsampling was used on occasion to obtain a better estimate.
  *   For collections like our Fish Collection, which is fully databased and record the number of specimens per lot/sample, we could use the total count reported from the database.
  *   For collections where the number of specimens per lot is greater than one and not necessarily or consistently recorded, we either did subsampling or assumed a conservative number per sample to obtain a better estimate. For example, we typically use a conservative, average value of 10 specimens per lots for the Mollusc Collection.
  *   For collections like Vascular Plants and Mineralogy, where one could assume that there is one specimen per sheet or one mineral per box, subsampling showed that it can be more than 1. As a result, we used different average counts for different portions of the collection, ranging from 1 to 3 specimens per sheet or 1 to 1.5 specimens per mineral collection.
  *   Coming back to the lots/samples with such large amount of specimens in them that they could not be reasonably estimated (e.g., plankton samples), as is the case for our Faunal Assemblage Collection, we resorted to only reporting the number of lots/samples, which is obviously a huge underestimation of the number of specimens.
  *   Finally, for our diatom/micro-algae collection, where the number of specimens (i.e., cells and chains) can be in the millions, if not billions per lot/sample, estimated number of specimens were obtained by extrapolating from the portion examined on a slide or a SEM mounts to the know volume examined. Therefore, in this instance, we kept the value at a very conservative level (in the few millions), knowing that the real value is probably in the multiple billions.

As you can see, lots of steps and assumptions along the way. And is that 14.6 millions specimens a reasonable estimate for our museum? Probably not (it should be in the billions is we take all unicellular organisms into consideration, but at least we can back it up.

I hope this helps.

Jean-Marc

Jean-Marc Gagnon, Ph.D. (he/him/his) (il/lui)
Curator, Invertebrate Collections / Chief Scientist
Conservateur, Collection des invertébrés / Expert scientifique en chef
Canadian Museum of Nature / Musée canadien de la nature
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From: Nhcoll-l <nhcoll-l-bounces at mailman.yale.edu> On Behalf Of Macklin, James
Sent: March 17, 2022 12:59 PM
To: Derek Sikes <dssikes at alaska.edu>; Bentley, Andrew Charles <abentley at ku.edu>
Cc: nhcoll-l at mailman.yale.edu
Subject: [EXT]Re: [Nhcoll-l] How many specimens

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This is a very challenging question and as Derek rightly points out, definitions and metrics matter! We should consider this a grand challenge and have a contest to see what kind of answers we get. Would need some good prizes though…

But for now my thinking is that we just say we have ‘lots’! ☺ lol

JAmes

From: Nhcoll-l <nhcoll-l-bounces at mailman.yale.edu<mailto:nhcoll-l-bounces at mailman.yale.edu>> On Behalf Of Derek Sikes
Sent: Thursday, March 17, 2022 12:53 PM
To: Bentley, Andrew Charles <abentley at ku.edu<mailto:abentley at ku.edu>>
Cc: nhcoll-l at mailman.yale.edu<mailto:nhcoll-l at mailman.yale.edu>
Subject: Re: [Nhcoll-l] How many specimens

It also depends on how one defines specimens.

Some define a specimen as a catalog record, i.e. 1 or more specimens since some catalog records are for 'lots' e.g. 2 ants on 1 pin, or 15 spiders in 1 vial.

Thus, you will get very different numbers if you tally catalog records based on specimens, compared to tallying the actual specimens themselves.

-Derek

On Thu, Mar 17, 2022 at 6:16 AM Bentley, Andrew Charles <abentley at ku.edu<mailto:abentley at ku.edu>> wrote:
Lennart

This is extremely difficult to estimate but estimates range into the billions (3-5 billion in various publications).  We can really only track digitized records and the best way to do this is through GBIF where specimen based records are around 216 million (observation records are close to 2 billion in comparison!!).

[https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/GwHlBWgSSahK3K6RO4pue6K0rRlXR6uGxtmWn-V-DYerXzruT5eBr7ZpuiNVMSa4IB936_94wp6msqL-4Nh2L7-kvETPIoSaoatQle4tAH2rZJtE08VttHso6cQ8AgOLso0Wdoc]

Hope that helps

Andy
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University of Kansas
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From: Nhcoll-l <nhcoll-l-bounces at mailman.yale.edu<mailto:nhcoll-l-bounces at mailman.yale.edu>> On Behalf Of Lennart Lennuk
Sent: Thursday, March 17, 2022 3:51 AM
To: nhcoll-l at mailman.yale.edu<mailto:nhcoll-l at mailman.yale.edu>
Subject: [Nhcoll-l] How many specimens

Hi!

Does anybody have lately calculated how many specimens are there in the natural history collections?

Best regards!
Lennart Lennuk
Head of collections
Estonian Museum of Natural History
+372 6603404, 56569916

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