Several people seem to have some serious misconceptions regarding the funding that has made this research possible. Rather than competing with public funding for education, the researchers at the museum bring in tremendous amounts of funding for research and education from outside sources. The collections and research at the museum are almost entirely funded by competitive government grants and private donors. The mammal collection alone hires and pays eight undergraduates, giving them both research experience and a regular paycheck. Funds for the acquisition of these specimens came in the form of separate grants procured by researchers and graduate students, with specific research purposes and broader impacts outlined therein (especially undergraduate and high school education). Specimens are collected to address specific research questions, donated through partnerships with agencies and private individuals, and opportunistically sampled when dead organisms are found (e.g., marine mammal strandings). Specimens loaned out not only benefit the researchers receiving them, but the undergraduates who get paid to process the loan, and the graduate students here who receive reciprocal loans from other institutions.
From a broader science perspective, the archival of these specimens allows for greater transparency and repeatability of science. You don't have to rely on someone saying that they saw a pigmy sperm whale (a new species for this state) on a beach near Yakutat. You can go to an accredited institution and see the specimen yourself. Its physical presence in an accredited collection allows other researchers, scientists, and members of the public to verify the species identification and, should they choose to, use other methods of analysis to determine its origin.
Those 100,000 specimens provide priceless information regarding variation within species across environments and through time. There are numerous cases where museum specimens have provided critical information regarding the changing conditions of our environments. Everyone knows that DDT is bad stuff, but did you know that the research that indicated that DDT relied on museum specimens collected before and after the time when it was widely used? We know that certain species are going locally extinct in the Southwest United States because we've got museum specimens from areas that those species are no longer found in. Marine mammal tissues are being used to determine changes in the ocean conditions in the Bering Sea and in our fisheries over the last 50 to 100 years.
And, finally, the museum provides important public education services. They have freely and happily offered assistance on matters from the fossil mammoth tooth found by a Fairbanks youngster to the migrating ropes of worm-like larvae noted last summer, and those are just the occurrences that made the News Miner!
Posted on April 21 at 3:06 p.m. (Suggest removal)
Several people seem to have some serious misconceptions regarding the funding that has made this research possible. Rather than competing with public funding for education, the researchers at the museum bring in tremendous amounts of funding for research and education from outside sources. The collections and research at the museum are almost entirely funded by competitive government grants and private donors. The mammal collection alone hires and pays eight undergraduates, giving them both research experience and a regular paycheck. Funds for the acquisition of these specimens came in the form of separate grants procured by researchers and graduate students, with specific research purposes and broader impacts outlined therein (especially undergraduate and high school education). Specimens are collected to address specific research questions, donated through partnerships with agencies and private individuals, and opportunistically sampled when dead organisms are found (e.g., marine mammal strandings). Specimens loaned out not only benefit the researchers receiving them, but the undergraduates who get paid to process the loan, and the graduate students here who receive reciprocal loans from other institutions.
From a broader science perspective, the archival of these specimens allows for greater transparency and repeatability of science. You don't have to rely on someone saying that they saw a pigmy sperm whale (a new species for this state) on a beach near Yakutat. You can go to an accredited institution and see the specimen yourself. Its physical presence in an accredited collection allows other researchers, scientists, and members of the public to verify the species identification and, should they choose to, use other methods of analysis to determine its origin.
Those 100,000 specimens provide priceless information regarding variation within species across environments and through time. There are numerous cases where museum specimens have provided critical information regarding the changing conditions of our environments. Everyone knows that DDT is bad stuff, but did you know that the research that indicated that DDT relied on museum specimens collected before and after the time when it was widely used? We know that certain species are going locally extinct in the Southwest United States because we've got museum specimens from areas that those species are no longer found in. Marine mammal tissues are being used to determine changes in the ocean conditions in the Bering Sea and in our fisheries over the last 50 to 100 years.
And, finally, the museum provides important public education services. They have freely and happily offered assistance on matters from the fossil mammoth tooth found by a Fairbanks youngster to the migrating ropes of worm-like larvae noted last summer, and those are just the occurrences that made the News Miner!
On University of Alaska Museum of the North's mammal collection is still growing