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10 April 2019 Building an integrated infrastructure for exploring biodiversity: field collections and archives of mammals and parasites
Kurt E. Galbreath, Eric P. Hoberg, Joseph A. Cook, Blas Armién, Kayce C. Bell, Mariel L. Campbell, Jonathan L. Dunnum, Altangerel T. Dursahinhan, Ralph P. Eckerlin, Scott L. Gardner, Stephen E. Greiman, Heikki Henttonen, F. Agustín Jiménez, Anson V. A. Koehler, Batsaikhan Nyamsuren, Vasyl V. Tkach, Fernando Torres-Pérez, Albina Tsvetkova, Andrew G. Hope
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Abstract

Museum specimens play an increasingly important role in predicting the outcomes and revealing the consequences of anthropogenically driven disruption of the biosphere. As ecological communities respond to ongoing environmental change, host–parasite interactions are also altered. This shifting landscape of host–parasite associations creates opportunities for colonization of different hosts and emergence of new pathogens, with implications for wildlife conservation and management, public health, and other societal concerns. Integrated archives that document and preserve mammal specimens along with their communities of associated parasites and ancillary data provide a powerful resource for investigating, anticipating, and mitigating the epidemiological, ecological, and evolutionary impacts of environmental perturbation. Mammalogists who collect and archive mammal specimens have a unique opportunity to expand the scope and impact of their field work by collecting the parasites that are associated with their study organisms. We encourage mammalogists to embrace an integrated and holistic sampling paradigm and advocate for this to become standard practice for museum-based collecting. To this end, we provide a detailed, field-tested protocol to give mammalogists the tools to collect and preserve host and parasite materials that are of high quality and suitable for a range of potential downstream analyses (e.g., genetic, morphological). Finally, we also encourage increased global cooperation across taxonomic disciplines to build an integrated series of baselines and snapshots of the changing biosphere.

© The Author(s) 2019. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of American Society of Mammalogists. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. For commercial re-use, please contact journals.permissions@oup.com
Kurt E. Galbreath, Eric P. Hoberg, Joseph A. Cook, Blas Armién, Kayce C. Bell, Mariel L. Campbell, Jonathan L. Dunnum, Altangerel T. Dursahinhan, Ralph P. Eckerlin, Scott L. Gardner, Stephen E. Greiman, Heikki Henttonen, F. Agustín Jiménez, Anson V. A. Koehler, Batsaikhan Nyamsuren, Vasyl V. Tkach, Fernando Torres-Pérez, Albina Tsvetkova, and Andrew G. Hope "Building an integrated infrastructure for exploring biodiversity: field collections and archives of mammals and parasites," Journal of Mammalogy 100(2), 382-393, (10 April 2019). https://doi.org/10.1093/jmammal/gyz048
Received: 31 January 2019; Accepted: 22 February 2019; Published: 10 April 2019
KEYWORDS
emerging infectious disease
field methods
integrated collections
necropsy
parasitology
specimens
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