Beyond Specimens: Research, Education, and Policy

In a world dominated by digital data, what is the role of biological specimens and their associated data generally held in natural history collections, and how do we demonstrate just how crucial these collections are? In December, a group of representatives from US biological societies met at the annual meeting of the American Institute of Biological Sciences (AIBS) Council of Member Societies and Organizations in Washington, DC, to discuss just that. The meeting, “Beyond Specimens,” fostered discussion about how best to enhance, promote, and mobilize biodiversity data. Two major themes emerged throughout the day: How can all—scientists better quantify and demonstrate the value of biological specimens to the public and to funding agencies? And how should the research community address issues that may impact future biodiversity research, such as changing legal landscapes, the lack of data standardization, and a lack of education for future taxonomists? The discussion around these topics is relevant and timely for anyone reliant on specimen-based data (e.g., correct species names, gene or tissue samples, species distributions, evolutionary relationships) for their research. A number of suggestions were made throughout the day for how researchers might more effectively demonstrate the impact of their collections-based research to the public and to decision-makers, with the goal of maintaining and even increasing government funding for collections management and specimen-based research. Besides their valuable roles in research on the patterns and processes of evolution, natural history specimen collections are more important than ever for enabling research into biodiversity under global change. To help tell these stories, efforts are underway to develop tools to quantify and model the impact of our collections. One example is the effort to link collection and specimen data to publications using ORCID (Open Researcher and Contributor ID), in part to give biologists quantifiable credit for species descriptions and taxonomic revisions. Some organizations and governments around the world already have procedures in place for demonstrating to the public and policymakers the connection between federally funded investments in specimen-based research and social and economic benefits. For example, the Atlas of Living Australia, Australia's leading biodiversity data repository, provides its data and analysis tools to government agencies and organizations involved in ecosystem services and conservation work. Individual researchers can also build interdisciplinary partnerships between departments at their institutions to demonstrate the value of specimen collections. Some attendees discussed successful efforts that encouraged engineering and medical departments to use collections for biology-inspired design and to actually reference these collections in their publications. The Biodiversity Collections Network is leading an effort to increase the research impact of biodiversity collection specimens by connecting specimens with one another and with extended data in an Extended Specimen Network (ESN; Lendemer et al. 2020). In 2011, the National Science Foundation (NSF) began funding the Advancing Digitization of Biodiversity Collections program, which has developed tools and protocols to drive the digitization of around 60 million specimens. Now that digitization of biological specimens is relatively commonplace and standardized, the focus has shifted to transforming the wealth of existing specimen data into an extended network that connects specimens to one another in ways that will represent biodiversity more thoroughly and allow for biodiversity-enabled research. An extended specimen begins with the physical specimen itself and adds data like specimen measurements and related information, such as DNA sequences, environmental data, or parasites found on the specimen. Ultimately, an extended specimen can become part of the network by being formally linked to other information, such as sequence-based phylogenies that the specimen's sequence data is part of, which, themselves, can be thought of as the summation of data from many specimens. American Institute of Biological Sciences Executive Director Robert E. Gropp addresses the meeting. Photograph: James M. Verdier. American Institute of Biological Sciences President Charles Fenster introduces the day's proceedings. Photograph: James M. Verdier. The Biodiversity Collections Network organizers imagine that the ESN will allow for highly integrated answers to questions such as What factors might explain the disjunct species distribution in these taxa? Answering this question could use phylogenetic data, trait data, genomic data, associated microbiome data, and more, all linked through the ESN. Some benefits of broadly implementing the ESN include better species tracking, attribution of use in publications, and the creation of a thriving network of biodiversity collections. As many of our specimen-based projects become more collaborative and use ever-larger data sets, we are faced with questions about how we can efficiently share this data and ensure data quality. The meeting participants shared personal experiences with the difficulties of large, international collaborations. Although data sharing and standardization have been much improved by national databases such as the NCBI (the National Center for Biotechnology Information), some argue that these data remain too siloed. Priorities for improving international data sharing include creating a standardized system of identifiers for specimens, agreeing how to measure data quality, maintaining collections catalogs, and developing tools to help researchers use the data to answer biological questions—for example, by performing complex queries across many databases at once. Panelists from nonprofits and industry described how they have been tackling data-sharing issues and echoed the challenges of siloed data, the lack of tools for sharing data-driven insights, and questions about the data quality in publicly available databases. From their perspectives, collected but unshared and unanalyzed data are wasted money. Joanne Tornow, from the NSF, urged the scientific community to better communicate about and share data across the divides in our subdisciplines. This requires overcoming varying research vocabularies and data standards. Representatives from government agencies further emphasized the importance of identifying and tackling big questions that span major areas of biology as a way of demonstrating the value of specimens-based research to funding agencies. Michael Willig, executive director, Institute of the Environment, describes the rapidly changing specimen landscape. Photograph: James M. Verdier Barbara Thiers, New York Botanical Garden, describes the proposed Extended Specimen Network (https://doi.org/10.1093/biosci/biz140) and its role in promoting and improving the value of US biodiversity collections. Photograph: James M. Verdier. Ongoing developments in international policy may change the landscape for international collaborations and specimen sharing. The Nagoya Protocol is already affecting data sharing. The protocol implements one of the main aims of the 1992 Convention on Biological Diversity, which is to provide for the fair and equitable sharing of benefits arising from use of genetic resources. As it is currently implemented, the protocol allows every signatory country the ability to define access and benefit-sharing rules for specimens collected within that country, even extending to items such as sequence material already on GenBank. Broadly, they have defined themselves as provider countries, which have the biodiversity, and user countries, which have technology and scientific training and have historically removed specimens from the provider countries. Some countries interpret the protocol to favor open data sharing (e.g., the European Union). Others, such as Brazil, Mexico, and India, have more stringent regulations regarding data sharing, in part because of their history of providing biodiversity data and specimens to users without necessarily benefitting from it themselves. Some meeting participants thought that, although it certainly complicating the logistics of data sharing, the Nagoya Protocol will have a net positive effect for international research, by encouraging user nations to forge real, ongoing collaborations around the world with researchers in provider nations. Our preexisting collaborations and work in these countries may, in fact, set us up well to petition governments for access to data, and the ESN will likely help to make sure compliance with the protocol has taken place at every step of specimen usage. At this moment, the United States has not ratified the Convention on Biological Diversity, which means it has limited say in the future implementation of the protocol. Therefore, United States–based researchers should encourage the United States ratify the treaty and become part of the official discussion. Because of the complexity of these issues, AIBS hosted a webinar in early 2020, where a foreign service officer for the US State Department provided a technical explanation of the history and current dimensions of the protocol. The webinar was recorded and remains available at www.aibs.org/events/webinar/nagoya-protocol.html. The meeting participants argued that biodiversity collections provide inspiring educational content. Specifically, many speakers at the meeting argued that collections are uniquely positioned to provide great examples of real-world data usable for pedagogical purposes (Ellwood et al. 2020). The ESN itself may prove to be a useful tool for education, assuming user-friendly interfaces are developed. One can imagine a learning progression through the ESN for a given specimen: Students start with the individual specimen, learning about how the data was collected and how data quality was assured. The lessons then progress to larger data sets that include the specimen, demonstrating the power of many specimens for inferring trends and making predictions. These data can be discussed in the context of a wider data science curriculum, touching on topics such as critically evaluating information and using data ethically. To realize this vision, educators need educational materials and instructor training. One such endeavor is the Biodiversity Literacy in Undergraduate Education (BLUE) initiative. An outgrowth of the Biodiversity Collections Network, BLUE organizes educator resources on biodiversity literacy, provides vetted data sets for classroom use, and encourages and trains researchers to make their own data into modules suitable for use by undergraduate classes. One positive side effect of familiarizing students with biodiversity data early is that it may inspire them to become biodiversity scientists, broadly defined. James Hanken, Alexander Agassiz Professor of Zoology and Director of the Museum of Comparative Zoology at Harvard University, discusses the biodiversity specimen community's challenges in navigating the various legal schema surrounding collections. Joanne Tornow, head of the NSF Biological Sciences Directorate, and Diane DiEullis, Senior Research Fellow, Weapons of Mass Destruction Center, National Defense University, Department of Defense, discuss the federal government's efforts with regard to specimen collections and digitization. Photograph: James M. Verdier. An earlier version of this report appeared on the Society for the Study of Evolution (SSE) Community Blog (https://ssecommunityblog.org/beyond-specimens-research-education-and-policy-around-natural-history-specimen-collections). The author gratefully acknowledges the assistance of blog editor Sasha Mushegian in honing the writing. AIBS acknowledges the financial support for the meeting from the Burroughs Wellcome Fund (grant no. BWF 1020321), the National Science Foundation (grant no. NSF-DBI 1441785), and Oxford University Press. E. Sally Chang is a postdoctoral researcher in evolutionary genomics, a member of the SSE Public Policy Committee and the current chair of the SSE Graduate Student Advisory Council.