1. Natural History Collections

2. Types of Natural History Collections Natural History Museums – Plants – Animals Skeletons Preserved – Fossils – Anthropology Collections – Geological collections Botanical Gardens Zoological Parks Plant Garden at the Museum of Natural History, Paris

3. Earliest Natural History Museums Cabinets of curiosities Public Museums – 16 th Century; Conrad Gessner in Zurich – 1635; Muséum national d'histoire naturelle in Paris – 1677; Ashmolean Museum in Oxford – 1881; Natural History Museum in London

4. Functions of Natural History Collections Education Catalog biodiversity – Library of information – Repository for type specimens – Source of physical and molecular samples for comparison Conservation Main Hall of the Field Museum of Natural History, Chicago

5. Types of Specimens Museums – Specimens are dry or preserved – Fossils Botanical gardens – Living plants in a park or in greenhouses – Herbaria Zoological Parks (Zoos) – Living terrestrial animals Aquaria – Living aquatic animals

6. Natural History Museum, London Founded 1881 Main collections: – Botany – Entomology – Minerology – Paleontology – Zoology

7. National Museum of Natural History, Washington, D.C. Established 1910 One of the Smithsonian Museums Main collections: – Plants – Animals – Fossils – Minerals – Rocks – Meteorites – Cultural artifacts

8. Botanical Gardents From herbal gardens and exotic plants, 18 th century History to biblical times Test and grow plants for medicine, dyes, food, timber, and other economic and strategic purposes Bartram Gardens –first botanical garden in N.A. – Satisfy European demand for exotic plants

9. New York Botanical Garden, NYC Established 1891 50 gardens, one a parcel of old-growth forest Pfizer Plant Research Laboratory – Genomic DNA storage – TreeBOL, a project to ‘barcode’ plants Mertz Library Rose garden of the New York Botanical Garden

10. Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew Opened 1759 Largest collection of living plants >30,000 different species Jodrell Laboratory – Botanical illustration – Seed collection – Research in secondary compounds Palm House, Kew Gardens

11. Herbarium Specimens Herbarium sheets Dry mosses & lichens Large specimens stored in boxes All kept in cabinets according to a system Herbarium at the Museum of Natural History, Paris

12. Herbaria Muséum national d'histoire naturelle (Paris) nearly 10 million specimens Ботанический институт им. В.Л.Комарова (St. Petersburg) more than 7 million specimens Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew (7 million specimens) New York Botanical Garden, (7 million specimens) Herbarium curator at the New York Botanical Garden William and Lynda Steere Herbarium

13. Zoos and Aquaria Evolved from private royal menageries Living collections with different habitat and dietary requirements Breeding programs in place for conservation and to maintain a breeding population