The next generation of natural history collections
Fig 2
The role of natural history biorepositories in pathogen biology and mitigation.
Host–parasite collections provide an exemplar of how museums can stimulate better coordination and participation in pathobiology across multiple institutions. Their roles range from sample providers to sample users (research) to informatics resources and contributing to the mitigation of public health crises. In this model, specimens are provided to natural history repositories by existing public health networks, fieldwork, and rural communities. Frozen and traditional collections become central to pathobiology research aimed at identifying pathogens, discovering zoonotic host associations, and delineating the potential spatial extent of the pathogen. Detailed questions about the pathogen ecology and evolutionary history can then be addressed to provide a framework for more effective public health response in increasingly dynamic environments. Relational web-accessible databases at museums facilitate complex linkages between all associated materials and allow careful tracking of all studies and their derived data (e.g., GenBank).