Increasing the value of museum collections by treating reference specimens for genomes like types

Increasingly, the link between published genomes and their source material (i.e., the reference specimens, known as ‘vouchers’) is lost. To maintain this connection and to establish that the original specimens were collected legally and ethically, we encourage authors to obtain or deposit their genetic vouchers in established natural history collections. Providing museum catalog numbers for these vouchers will demonstrate the legal provenance of the genomic source material and increase the value of these museum collections. Treating the original source materials from which genomes are sequenced (what we call ‘genometypes’) like type specimens will add a new dimension to natural collections by increasing their importance to the genetic and taxonomic communities.