Abstract Natural history collections are essential ex situ reservoirs of biodiversity, safeguarding irreplaceable information against accelerating habitat loss and the erosion of archival knowledge. In the Global South, these collections face systemic vulnerabilities such as chronic underfunding, fragmented policies, and insufficient curatorial planning that undermine their long-term sustainability. This study applied the McGinley Protocol, a structured framework for diagnosing curatorial health, to the Lepidoptera Collection of the Museu de Zoologia da Universidade de São Paulo, one of the largest entomological repositories in Latin America. An initial survey of 2693 drawers produced the first comprehensive curatorial profile and revealed a Collection Health Index (CHI) of 0.51. Targeted interventions addressing conservation, outdated taxonomy, and spatial disorganization raised the CHI to 0.81 within 10 months, with two-thirds of drawers meeting departmental standards and more than 30% digitally integrated. Beyond measurable gains, the adapted protocol that subdivided Curatorial Level 1 (the category for drawers requiring urgent conservation attention) into categories of urgency demonstrated the value of operationalizing invisible curatorial labour. These results highlight how structured diagnostics can transform collection management into evidence-based conservation practice, strengthen institutional accountability, and reaffirm the strategic role of natural history museums in sustaining biodiversity knowledge for future generations.
Silva et al. (Tue,) studied this question.