Collaborative Proposal--Curation, Data Basing and Integration of the Orphaned Illinois Mammal Collection

在约瑟夫·a·库克博士的指导下，新墨西哥大学获得了一项奖励，以拯救伊利诺斯州自然历史博物馆的一项孤儿哺乳动物收藏，并将其重新分配给其他三家机构的收藏，这些标本可以安全地安置在那里，并用于研究和教育。大约47000件哺乳动物的皮肤和骨骼标本将被重新安置。这些标本是在过去的一个世纪里从美国、墨西哥和菲律宾的不同地点收集的。值得注意的部分包括亚利桑那州的哺乳动物专著中使用的标本，濒危的墨西哥灰狼的标本，以及许多因人类发展或气候变化而改变的地点的标本。这些标本为这个国家哺乳动物的分布提供了实物记录，并为土地管理者和环境研究提供了重要数据。这些标本将被送往新墨西哥大学的西南生物学博物馆、犹他州杨百翰大学的蒙特·l·比恩博物馆和伊利诺斯州的菲尔德自然历史博物馆，在那里它们将被整合到其他哺乳动物收藏中，这些新标本将增加机构的区域优势。储存条件将得到改善，与标本有关的数据将被收集到一个在线数据库中，供全世界的研究人员和教育工作者使用。该项目将招募许多学生，这将为本科生和研究生的研究提供材料。

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.