Natural history collections contain information needed to prevent, prepare for, and respond to disease outbreaks that could turn into a pandemic — but they are an underused resource. Dozens of collections and other experts gathered last year to analyze how to change that and their findings were recently published in the journal BioScience.
“During the recent pandemic that we experienced, people were learning a lot,” said Deborah Paul, a biodiversity informatics specialist and community liaison at the Prairie Research Institute. “We know collections can help us understand what’s happening in nature — with us, with humans as part of nature. So, the goal of this project was to gather people who have expertise in this type of research and were part of studying what was going on.”
Deborah Paul and Pamela Soltis, a distinguished professor and curator at the Florida Museum of Natural History, were among 45 co-authors providing expertise from institutions around the country.
Worldwide, natural history collections are home to around “3 billion specimens that document life on Earth,” the authors write. These samples hold information that can be used in pandemic preparedness, offering clues about “the geographic distributions of pathogens and their hosts, the origins and spread of disease and the ecological conditions leading to spillover.”
The work, funded by a National Science Foundation grant to the University of Florida, came out of two workshops in which collections experts and researchers across disciplines discussed lessons learned from the COVID-19 pandemic and past pandemics and developed ideas about how collections can be incorporated more effectively into future pandemic responses. Participants included museum collections, pathobiology, bioinformatics, education and computer science experts.
The meetings included professional facilitators who are also artists and who created graphic illustrations of the discussions in real time, helping to convey the topics in a visual format to stimulate further conversations. Paul noted that artists are essential collaborators for helping scientists communicate with each other and the public.
The authors conclude that there is a need for interdisciplinary communication and network development, raising awareness of natural history data across disciplines and for financial support of workforce development, collections infrastructure, field work and digitization. Data need to be cross-domain findable, accessible, interoperable and reusable to be impactful.
“We have more and more collections data all the time, so there is a need to interconnect it and make it discoverable,” Paul said. “That means investing in local infrastructure, it means investing in local data stewardship, it means investing in local expertise.”
The need for interdisciplinary collaboration goes beyond just sharing data. For example, samples taken by field researchers need to be stored by collections managers using methods that preserve the information, such as RNA, needed by pathobiologists, who use these materials to study and track disease-causing pathogens.
The collaboration also extends to a variety of specimen types and material, said the paper’s senior author Pamela Soltis. She noted that mammal, bird and amphibian specimens may all carry signatures of past events.
“Museum collections have tremendous potential for tracing the spread of diseases,” she said, and further noted that while animal diseases receive greater attention, plant pathogens can likewise be tracked using herbarium specimens. “Both fungi and bacteria can be extracted from herbarium materials with only minimal sampling from the specimens. This work is really in its infancy.”
Museums and organizations like iDigBio, a natural history specimen portal funded by the National Science Foundation, are promoting the value of collections in addressing a whole range of societal challenges, from disease mitigation to food security. “The unanticipated uses of collections continue to grow – and for that reason alone, institutions like UF should continue their strong support of collections.”
The authors considered pandemic preparedness and the role of collections in the context of One Health, a collaborative approach to global health issues, Paul explained. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention notes that human health is connected to the health of animals, plants, and the environment, and interactions between them. Changes in global populations and where they live, changes in climate and land use, and increased global transportation have affected the spread of diseases between people and animals — and increased the need to not consider human health and disease alone.
Paul said using a One Health approach allows for early detection of a disease outbreak, rapid notification of communities globally, and faster response to threats. This saves lives and shields the global economy from serious impacts. Because geopolitical boundaries do not contain pathogens, it’s in the interest of all countries to collectively invest in the infrastructure and networks needed to prepare for and address any potential pandemic, she added.
Content adapted from a university of Illinois Urbana-Champaign press release by Rosalind Essig.
Source: Pamela Soltis, psoltis@flmnh.ufl.edu
Media contact: Jerald Pinson, jpinson@flmnh.ufl.edu, 352-294-0452