[Nhcoll-l] Cataloging unidentified, multi-species Lots

[Bentley, Andrew Charles]

Sarah

My inclination is to catalog them so that you can expose the general collecting information and event to potential users.  I am sure there are users out there that we use these if they knew they existed.  It would increase loan traffic (good for advocacy but not for workload 😊) and maybe even provide a community solution to identification.  You could catalog it as a lot and identify it as some higher level taxonomic classification (some entomology collections do this for pit trap contents and catalog it as Insecta) as an indication that it is unidentified while providing an estimate of the number of specimens and maybe even further info in a remarks field about contents – you could even take an image of the vial that would give users a general indication of what is in it.

Given that you are using Specify, you could even use the containers concept to then related any specimens that are removed and identified from that lot back to the original lot – although that may also be effectively done through the field number or collecting event information.

What about subsampling the vial and sequencing it to get a list of included species?  Now that would be a cool project you could get NSF money for I would think.  It would be destructive but would only require a small subsampling of the entire lot.

Hope that helps

Andy
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Andy Bentley
Ichthyology Collection Manager
University of Kansas
Biodiversity Institute
Dyche Hall
1345 Jayhawk Boulevard<x-apple-data-detectors://9/>
Lawrence, KS, 66045-7561<x-apple-data-detectors://9/>
USA<x-apple-data-detectors://9/>

Tel: (785) 864-3863<tel:%28785%29%20864-3863>
Fax: (785) 864-5335<tel:%28785%29%20864-5335>
Email: abentley at ku.edu<mailto:abentley at ku.edu>
ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3093-1258
http://ichthyology.biodiversity.ku.edu<http://ichthyology.biodiversity.ku.edu/>
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From: Nhcoll-l <nhcoll-l-bounces at mailman.yale.edu> On Behalf Of Sarah K. Huber
Sent: Friday, March 31, 2023 9:08 AM
To: nhcoll-l at mailman.yale.edu
Subject: [Nhcoll-l] Cataloging unidentified, multi-species Lots

What are people’s thoughts on cataloging unidentified, multi-species lots?

Here at the VIMS Fish Collection we have thousands of vials of unidentified larval fishes in multi-species lots (hundreds of thousands of individuals). The ability to identify all of these fishes prior to cataloging is daunting, and likely will not happen in the next 50 years. Especially since these lots come from collecting programs that are on-going, and we have limited personnel who are trained in taxonomic identification of larval fishes. I am debating the value of cataloging these lots without identifications. They all have good collection data, a count of the number of individuals per lot, and in many cases I can take a photograph of all individuals through the scope to attach to the collection record. The data and photographs would be made public. As individuals get identified out of these lots, they would receive a separate catalog number according to our normal protocols.

I would be interested to hear what people think about this approach.

Sarah K. Huber, Ph.D. (she/her)
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<https://nam10.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.vims.edu%2Fresearch%2Ffacilities%2Ffishcollection%2Findex.php&data=05%7C01%7Cabentley%40ku.edu%7C2b0f615e0e3641fb0af208db31f15e26%7C3c176536afe643f5b96636feabbe3c1a%7C0%7C0%7C638158684976223320%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C3000%7C%7C%7C&sdata=U7VcFXMHQUUrrH3LK12wLFW4w1l6THGIIAP3UjJa0Ss%3D&reserved=0>
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