Museum Techniques in the 21st Century

Welcome to the 4th edition of an intensive course on innovative uses of museum’s resources for vertebrate’s research. By the end of this course students will have an updated overview of the potential of museum collections for biodiversity research. The host instructors, from CIBIO-InBIO and the Museum of Natural History and Science of the University of Porto (MHNCUP) and foreign instructors from Cornell University Museum of Vertebrates (CUMV), will share their knowledge and experience on preparing, curating, and using museum specimens. This will be complemented by online lectures of several invited researchers. In addition, students will practice how to prepare bird and mammal specimens and how tissues can be obtained and preserved for a variety of uses.

More specifically we aim to:

1) present an updated overview on the value of museums and the use of collections and specimens in the 21st century, using new technologies and analytical methods, following the principle of the "extended specimen”. These include, among others:

a) discuss state-of-the-art ‘whole specimen’ techniques including CT scanning and 3D modelling;

b) consider how museum specimens provide genetic and genomic resources and how to retrieve genomic data from historical specimens;

c) present other non-genetic molecular methods (e.g., stable isotopes, toxicology and quantification of coloration);

d) Understand the potential of the spatial and temporal data gathered along with the specimen, especially when made available in global repositories, such as GBIF.

2) practice the ways that ‘voucher specimens’ and tissues of vertebrates can be prepared, to ensure that quality data is available for generations to come.