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Natural history collections are invaluable repositories of biological information that provide an unrivaled record of Earth's biodiversity. Museum genomics—genomics research using traditional museum and cryogenic collections and the infrastructure supporting these investigations—has particularly enhanced research in ecology and evolutionary biology, the study of extinct organisms, and the impact of anthropogenic activity on biodiversity. However, leveraging genomics in biological collections has exposed challenges, such as digitizing, integrating, and sharing collections data; updating practices to ensure broadly optimal data extraction from existing and new collections; and modernizing collections practices, infrastructure, and policies to ensure fair, sustainable, and genomically manifold uses of museum collections by increasingly diverse stakeholders. Museum genomics collections are poised to address these challenges and, with increasingly sensitive genomics approaches, will catalyze a future era of reproducibility, innovation, and insight made possible through integrating museum and genome sciences.
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Using Museum collections to assess the impact of industrialization on mussel (Mytilus edulis) calcification
Mytilus edulisis a commercially and ecologically important species found along the east coast of the United States. Ecologically,M.edulisimproves water quality through filtration feeding and provides habitat formation and coastal protection through reef formation. Like many marine calcifiers, ocean warming, and acidification are a growing threat to these organisms—impacting their morphology and function. Museum collections are useful in assessing long-term environmental impacts on organisms in a natural multi-stressor environment, where acclimation and adaptation can be considered. Using the American Museum of Natural History collections ranging from the early 1900s until now, we show that shell porosity changes through time. Shells collected today are significantly more porous than shells collected in the 1960s and, at some sites, than shells collected from the early 1900s. The disparity between porosity changes matches well with the warming that occurred over the last 130 years in the north Atlantic suggesting that warming is causing porosity changes. However, more work is required to discern local environmental impacts and to fully identify porosity drivers. Since, porosity is known to affect structural integrity, porosity increasing through time could have negative consequences for mussel reef structural integrity and hence habitat formation and storm defenses.
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- Award ID(s):
- 1852787
- PAR ID:
- 10519386
- Editor(s):
- Fernández_Robledo, José A
- Publisher / Repository:
- PLoS ONE
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- PLoS ONE
- Volume:
- 19
- Issue:
- 4
- ISSN:
- 1932-6203
- Page Range / eLocation ID:
- e0301874
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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Accepted Manuscript1.0
- Journal Article:
- https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0301874
