Collaborative Research: Curation, Data Basing, and Integration of the Orphaned Illinois Mammal Collection

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An award has been made to the University of New Mexico under the direction of Dr. Joseph A. Cook to rescue an orphaned mammal collection from the Illinois Museum of Natural History and redistribute it to three other institutional collections, where the specimens can be housed safely and used in research and education. Approximately 47,000 specimens of mammal skins and skeletons will be re-housed. These specimens were collected over the past century from a wide variety of locations in the United States, Mexico, and the Philippines. Notable portions of the collection include Arizona specimens used in a monograph on mammals from that state, specimens of the endangered Mexican Grey Wolf, and collections from many sites that have been changed by human development or subject to climate change. Such specimens provide physical record of the distribution of mammals in this country and provide important data for land managers and environmental studies. Specimens will go to the Museum of Southwestern Biology at the University of New Mexico, the Monte L. Bean Museum at Brigham Young University in Utah, and the Field Museum of Natural History in Illinois, where they will be integrated into other mammal collections where the new specimens will add to the regional strengths of the institutions. Storage conditions will be improved, and the data associated with the specimens will be captured for an online database that will be accessible to a worldwide community of researchers and educators. Many students will be recruited for the project, and this will provide material for undergraduate and graduate student research.