Specimen cases for the University of Alaska Museum bird collection

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A grant has been awarded to the University of Alaska under the direction of Dr. K. Winker to obtain additional specimen cases for the University of Alaska Museum Bird Collection. Because of Alaska's size and location, it constitutes a unique faunal region that includes components from both the North American and Eurasian bird faunas and a Beringian bird fauna. Over the past five years the University of Alaska Museum Bird Collection has grown by almost 11,000 specimens which probably places UAM among the top 10 institutions in North America in terms of bird collection growth. The current specimen holdings now exceed existing case space. Twenty additional specimen cases will allow this important collection to be housed and maintained according to collection standards. The installation of these 20 additional cases in the Collection and concomitant rearrangement of the Bird Collection in the increased case space thus made available lead naturally to an enhancement of the quality of care with which the collection can be maintained. Every bird specimen at UAM provides a unique snapshot--both in time and in space--of the dynamics of a facet of the bird populations of northwesternmost North America. The manifold ways in which they prove to be of importance over time include questions only now being asked, such as the immediate and varied responses of different species of birds in Alaska to climate change in the Arctic; measurements of stable isotope ratios in changing food webs; and quantification of heavy-metal contaminant levels at high latitudes. These specimens, already proving valuable to science, will without doubt continue to be of great value in the future in relation to questions not yet posed.