Event Description
Mason Heberling, PhD, Assistant Curator of Botany,
Carnegie Museum of Natural History, Pittsburgh, PA
Rethinking the Herbarium Specimen
With
over 390 million plant specimens collected by thousands of botanists over
nearly five centuries in museums worldwide, herbaria (collections of preserved
dead plants) comprise an enormous resource for understanding the world around
us. Herbarium specimens are receiving unprecedented attention due to
recently developed methods, new perspectives, and perhaps most notably, their
increased accessibility through widespread digitization. While the longstanding
functions of herbaria remain relevant in modern research, herbarium data are
increasingly used in unanticipated ways, providing insights on environmental
change otherwise not possible. I will discuss the past, present, and future of
herbarium specimen use, supported by a review of over 13,000 herbarium-related
studies from 1923-2017. Specimens are increasingly appreciated as temporally
and spatially extensive sources of genotypic, phenotypic and biogeographic
data. I will also highlight several unanticipated uses of specimens in global
change research, including documenting trait changes in invasive plants, understanding
impacts of climate change on flowering and leaf out times, and even using
specimen roots to measure a century of soil microbial communities. As novel
uses of specimens become more prevalent, new curatorial needs and perspectives
need to be considered, including an open re-evaluation of the very collection
event itself. The use of digital observations and community science platforms,
such as iNaturalist, integrated with museum specimen data, provide a powerful
approach to document and understand biodiversity change. As we enter the
Anthropocene, herbaria have likewise entered a new era with enhanced
scientific, educational, and societal relevance.
Mason
Heberling is the Assistant Curator of Botany at Carnegie Museum of Natural
History. He is a plant ecologist who studies the physiological ecology of
temperate forest understory plants, especially in the context of non-native
plant invasions and climate change. He earned a B.S. in biology from Penn State
University and a PhD in biology from Syracuse University, studying understory
shrub invasions in Eastern United States. He was a postdoctoral researcher at
the University of Tennessee Knoxville. Heberling’s current research
is aimed at understanding the local impacts of global environmental change on
plants, including plant responses to climate change and biological invasions.
These studies are either complemented by or directly rely upon herbarium specimens. Read
more at masonheberling.com
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