Do We Still Need Natural History Collections?

Dear Colleagues,

As we witness an accelerated change in our environment today, the importance of natural history collections increases daily. Natural history collections, especially in museums, are special treasure chests that store a wide variety of information that can be used in various scientific fields such as biology, ecology, palaeontology, or geology. Although climate change, habitat loss, and the spread of invasive species have been hot topics in recent years, the information that natural history collections can provide is still overlooked. Specimens from natural history collections, particularly if properly handled and housed, can provide valuable material for distributional, genetic, or environmental analyses at temporal and spatial scales. In addition, such collections are “windows into and through time“ with the possibility of repeated measurements and studies essential to scientific work.

In light of all this, we have decided to guest edit a Special Issue focusing on the use of natural history collections in science today. We invite biologists, taxonomists, ecologists, palaeontologists, geologists, and other researchers, as well as collection managers who have worked with natural history collections to contribute to this Special Issue. Our goal and vision is to acknowledge that natural history collections are fundamental to science today.

The following list includes some of the topics covered:

• history of important natural history collections;
• significance of specific natural history collections for current research;
• the future of natural history collections: suggestions on how to improve their usefulness;
• cases studies of research on natural history collections;
• curation of natural history collections.

Dr. Vlatka Mičetić Stanković
Dr. Marija Ivković
Dr. Irena Grbac
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 250 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for assessment.

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