[Taxacom] survey on vouchering practices in host-pathogen research

[Maarten Vanhove]

Dear colleagues

I am writing in my capacity as a member of the COVID-19 Task Force, a joint initiative supported by the Consortium of European Taxonomic Facilities (CETAF) and the Distributed System of Scientific Collections (DiSSCo).

In particular, I am involved in the subgroup associated with museum collections, which is tasked with reviewing and recommending guidelines for the preservation of viral evidence. We are especially interested in better connecting the microbiological and museum communities, both personally and through infrastructural changes to the archiving of host specimens (vouchers) in museum collections.

As such, we are seeking the input of our colleagues in microbiology/virology/pathobiology/parasitology/(veterinary) medicine/public healthto assess the strength of current connections to museums and to guide our recommendations moving forward. The survey can be found here: https://bucknell.co1.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_cuc17LGMzwPVC4J

We are looking forward to hearing your views on this, and warmly thank you in advance for taking the time to fill out this short survey!

Kindest regards

prof. Maarten Vanhove, PhD
Research Group Zoology: Biodiversity & Toxicology
Hasselt University (Belgium)