Commentary 122(3).indd

Future of Avian Genetic Resources Collections: Archives of Evolutionary and Environmental History.—In the past 30 years, genetic resources collections (GRCs) have shiĞ ed position within ornithology, from a novel supplement to traditional voucher collections to a major core source of raw material fueling multiple subdisciplines. The demand for specimens from GRCs now greatly exceeds both the demand for traditional voucher specimens and, in many cases, the resources available to museums to maintain GRCs. The projection for the next decade is ever-increasing use. Here, we present a brief update on modern principles and challenges of collection, storage, organization, use, and dissemination of genetic resources and electronic information associated with such collections, drawing heavily on the experience of building, loaning, and curating the GRC of the Burke Museum at the University of Washington. The Burke Museum was established under the curatorship of Sievert Rohwer in 1986 and is now the second-largest such collection for birds in the United States, aĞ er that of Louisiana State University. In addition, we make a number of recommendations for ensuring the long-term sustainability and value of avian GRCs. Unique challenges for avian genetic resources collections.—There are now several large (5,000–60,0000 individual specimens) avian GRCs in North America, Europe, and Australia, and many other museums and individuals have smaller GRCs. These collections typically consist of frozen tissues (heart, liver, muscle) of birds. In many cases, fi eld and storage practices have changed liĴ le since their origin in ornithology in the 1970s and 1980s (Johnson et al. 1984). Because sampling from genetic resources is destructive and nonrenewable without further collecting, there are a number of issues regarding loan policies and reciprocation that are specifi c to these collections. The fate of GRCs is tied, even more intimately than the fate of voucher collections, to the future of fi eld collecting ; whereas traditional GRCs consisting of frozen tissues must eventually be renewed by continued fi eldwork, current voucher collections will, in principle, remain intact and valuable without any further fi eldwork. Particularly for small to midsize museums with liĴ le internal funding for the upkeep of GRCs (such as the Burke Museum), it remains a challenge to provide for the increasing demand on GRCs while at the same time recouping costs for fi eld collecting , curation, and storage of tissues. These collections and others like them face a unique set of challenges: how to balance the …