OLD BAT: Specimens from museum collections, such as this bat collected in 1923, present challenges to barcoding because their DNA can be badly degraded.COURTESY OF ELIZABETH L. CLARE
Specimen collectors from days of yore did not always handle their catch with care, at least not when it came to preserving DNA. You can’t blame them, of course. DNA as genetic material wasn’t even a twinkle in the scientific community’s eye a century ago. Aquatic specimens were often preserved in alcohol or formalin, making it all but impossible to extract usable DNA for barcoding analysis, a standard method of identifying species by variations in the same gene. Even among dry-preserved specimens, DNA breaks down fairly quickly, dissuading many barcoders from working with museum collections—with the result that they miss out on museums’ wealth of species information.
“Collections are the best places in the world to go collecting for biodiversity,” says Paul Hebert, a barcoding ...
