Some people may be wondering—if the collections are going to end up in another herbarium, what is the big deal? The specimens and their data will still be protected, right? But that isn't the whole story... 1/n
I was just forwarded communications from Duke admins that this is true: one of the largest and most active herbaria in the United States is being closed in the middle of an extinction crisis, because Duke leadership does not wish to support the infrastructure costs.
Feb 18, 2024 03:54Herbaria, especially university herbarium like DUKE, contribute to the study of biodiversity in two complementary ways. Being an archive for specimens is one of their objectives, but an equally important objective is training scientists. 2/n
Duke biology has five tenured faculty associated with the herbarium. This by itself isn't unusual. What is quite unique is that only one of those professors focuses on flowing plants. Instead, Duke is a hotspot for the often-neglected study of ferns, mosses... 3/n
... lichens, mushroom fungi—something that can be broadly termed "cryptogamic botany." As a training program, the Duke herbarium has been incredibly successful in producing specialists in these understudied taxonomic groups (see for reference this post from the bad place). 4/n
The two functions—archiving and training—depend on each other. The value of the archive is continually improved through study from professors, postdocs, grad students, visitors, etc. The training can't happen without specimens to study! 5/n
If Duke shuts down this very successful program and sends the specimens elsewhere, the data will be safe—the archiving mission will go to another institution. But the training mission will be lost—just because another place gets specimens, it doesn't... 6/n
... mean that they will have the faculty lines, student admissions spots, etc. to take on this aspect of the Duke herbarium mission. The reason why this threatened closure is so disastrous for biodiversity research is not that the specimens might move. 7/n
It's that if this goes through, and Duke ceases to be a training center for plant and fungal systematics, we will have a future with even fewer scientists who know how to study the biodiversity of ferns, lichens, mosses, etc. ... 8/n
... when we know that we already have too few trained systematics/taxonomists for pretty much every branch in the tree of life. Sadly, "Big Duke" and Duke Biology leadership don't see this in itself as a compelling reason to keep the herbarium. 9/n
For the record, this is why I didn't like the herbarium article that appeared in Duke Magazine in December. I thought it focused too much on the archiving mission and could feed into a perception that it is a passion project of a few faculty... 10/n
... who will retire soon, instead of a vibrant training center with scientists at career stages from undergrad to full professor (notably excluding early-career faculty, because institutional neglect of the herbarium has been happening for a while!) 11/11
