The five million bird eggs in the world’s museum collections are an invaluable and underused resource

Resource type
Journal article
Creator (person)
Marini, Miguel à‚ngelo
Hall, Linnea
Bates, John
Steinheimer, Frank D
McGowan, R Y
Silveira, Luis Fà¡bio
Lijtmaer, Darà­o A
Tubaro, Pablo Luis
Cà³rdoba-Cà³rdoba, Sergio
Gamauf, Anita
Greeney, Harold F
Schweizer, Manuel
Kamminga, Pepijn
Cibois, Alice
Vallotton, Laurent
Russell, Douglas
Robinson, Scott K
Sweet, Paul R
Frahnert, Sylke
Corado, René
Heming, Neander Marcel
Date published
July 24, 2020
Abstract
The ~1.97 million egg sets (~5 million eggs) housed in museums have not been used in proportion to their availability. We highlight the wide variety of scientific disciplines that have used egg collections and the geographic locations and sizes of these collections, to increase awareness of the importance of egg collections, improve their visibility to the scientific community, and suggest that they offer a wealth of data covering large spatial scales and long time series for broad investigations into avian biology. We provide a brief history of egg collections and an updated list of museums/institutions with egg collections worldwide. We also review the limitations, challenges, and management of egg collections, and summarize recent literature based on historical and recent museum egg materials.
Journal title
The Auk
Volume
137
Article number
ukaa036
Publisher
Oxford University Press
Place of publication
Oxford
eISSN
1938-4254
Date accepted
May 13, 2020
Official URL
Rights statement
In Copyright
DOI