GenBank and vouchers

[Doug Yanega]

Tim Lowrey wrote:

>In response to Jim's request for opinions from museum curators I view
>natural history collections/museums as the place for the deposit and
>archival of biological voucher specimens. In addition to the vouchering
>problems in the molecular biology fields there are also problems in ecology
>as have been mentioned. Here at UNM we  have an LTER (Long Term Ecological
>Research) site and in the past there have been lapses in vouchering of
>research material.  The Museum of Southwestern Biology now acts as the
>respository for voucher specimens from the LTER.  We also house vouchers
>for molecular study vouchers if the organisms are invertebrates,
>vertebrates, or plants (in other words organisms that suit our
>collections). We have one of the largest natural history frozen tissue
>collections (-80C) in the world and it is fully vouchered and catalogued.
>We also constantly remind our colleagues in the Biology Department that
>they and their students need to deposit vouchers upon completion of their
>research projects.

My question about this is simple: who pays for the time and effort of the
Museum personnel to process all this material, and what about space
allocation for all the material the LTER generates? Is ALL of this budgeted
into the LTER grant, or is ALL of it coming out of the Museum's budget?
There is, I think, obviously a limit to how much you can expect any Museum
to pay for out of its own pocket (when they're basically playing nursemaid
to specimens resulting from someone else's grant). If the Museum runs out
of space as a result of the influx of LTER material, and needs compactors,
for instance, will the LTER folks help pay the bill?
        Basically, my point is that I agree with everything said here
wholeheartedly, ASSUMING that the people depositing the vouchers are
willing to cover at least SOME of the extra costs resulting from this
activity. Of course, we've often lamented here about how ecologists and
others don't include fees for taxonomists (to give identifications) into
their budgets, so expecting them to ALSO include fees for voucher archival
services is probably also just so much wishful thinking - unless, of
course, the funding agencies/journal editors establish a uniform policy of
rejecting any applications/manuscripts that do not explicitly account for
such services. People would learn REALLY quickly about proper IDs and
vouchering, were that the case. To me, that seems like the only real hope
we might have, though I'm not so sure we'll ever live to see it.


Doug Yanega        Dept. of Entomology         Entomology Research Museum
Univ. of California - Riverside, Riverside, CA 92521
phone: (909) 787-4315 (standard disclaimer: opinions are mine, not UCR's)
           http://insects.ucr.edu/staff/yanega.html
  "There are some enterprises in which a careful disorderliness
        is the true method" - Herman Melville, Moby Dick, Chap. 82