Natural History Museum, Cromwell Road, London SW7 5BD, UK.
Trends Ecol Evol. 2011 Apr;26(4):153-4. doi: 10.1016/j.tree.2010.12.009. Epub 2011 Jan 20.
In the otherwise excellent special issue of Trends in Ecology and Evolution on long-term ecological research (TREE 25(10), 2010), none of the contributors mentioned the importance of natural history collections (NHCs) as sources of data that can strongly complement past and ongoing survey data. Whereas very few field surveys have operated for more than a few decades, NHCs, conserved in museums and other institutions, comprise samples of the Earth's biota typically extending back well into the nineteenth century and, in some cases, before this time. They therefore span the period of accelerated anthropogenic habitat destruction, climate warming and ocean acidification, in many cases reflecting baseline conditions before the major impact of these factors.
在《生态学趋势》（Trends in Ecology and Evolution）上关于长期生态研究的一期杰出特刊中，没有任何一位撰稿人提到自然历史收藏（NHC）作为数据来源的重要性，这些数据可以很好地补充过去和正在进行的调查数据。虽然很少有野外调查能够持续几十年以上，但保存在博物馆和其他机构中的自然历史收藏包括了地球生物群的样本，这些样本通常可以追溯到 19 世纪，甚至在某些情况下，还可以追溯到更早的时间。因此，它们跨越了加速的人为栖息地破坏、气候变暖以及海洋酸化的时期，在许多情况下反映了这些因素主要影响之前的基准条件。
