Why are natural history collections important?
The world we live in is incredibly diverse. Despite over 250 years of Linnean taxonomy we have managed to only describe 2 million of the 10-30 million plant, animal, fungal, and bacterial species that inhabit our planet. Through their collections, natural history museums like the Auburn University Museum of Natural History provide access to specimens that are integral to studying and understanding Earth’s biodiversity. Scientists have used the wealth of data contained within these important collections to learn just about everything we know about species’ diversity, morphology, anatomy, genetics, and distributions. Collections help us to understand how species have changed through time and most importantly how the actions of humans are impacting them.