FEATURE
Alpine Biodiversity Fieldwork Collections from Biologically Undocumented Mountains By Ken Marr, Curator of Botany, and Claudia Copley, Entomology Collections Manager
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very year, Royal BC Museum staff visit previously unstudied areas in BC’s alpine to collect specimens. We collect for many reasons. Specimens document the presence of a particular species at a specific place and time, which can be critically important for conservation efforts. Learning more about the distribution of species helps us understand the
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What’s inSight
landscape’s history. Habitat information collected along with the specimens provides insight into their ecology. Museum specimens are used to document the various attributes of known species, and occasionally species new to science are discovered among collections made years earlier. And there may be future uses for these specimens that we can’t predict. Decades ago no one knew that
museum specimens would one day be used in DNA studies, but these have proven invaluable for taxonomy and conservation research, as well as many other lines of inquiry. This year four Royal BC Museum scientists and one museum research associate visited six mountains, three near Tumbler Ridge and three in the northern Rockies just east of the Williston Reservoir.