Relocation and Infrastructure Upgrade for the Donald Ryder Dickey Collection of Birds and Mammals

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This award will enhance the long-term safety and preservation of the priceless UCLA Donald R. Dickey Collection of Birds and Mammal collection. Specifically, funds will be used to purchase and install a space-saving compactor system and several new specimen cases in a renovated, larger space provided by the university. At present, specimens are stored in deteriorating 65+-year-old cases in a small, non-air-conditioned underground space. The space-saver will reduce space needed to house the collection by nearly fifty percent, thus permitting expansion of the collection, more workspace, and sufficient room to offer classes in museum science skills for the first time in decades. NSF funds will support both graduate students and undergraduate students to assist with the move and museum curation. The Donald R. Dickey Bird and Mammal Collection, containing approximately 64,000 specimens, is one of the largest maintained by a California university. Its geographic strengths include western North America and Middle America, with many specimens collected prior to 1950. Thus, the collection provides a critical record of animal distributions, genetic diversity, and morphology prior to post-World War II population expansion and habitat degradation. An important element of the intellectual merit of enhancing and preserving these collections relates to their role as an archive of baseline data on biodiversity and species distributions in the face of current climate change. In addition, the collection is used to expose students to tangible evidence of variation in nature, the relationship of animal form to function, and evolutionary relationships. Over 1600 undergraduates have contact through their coursework with some aspect of the collection each year, and some of these go on to complete independent studies or assist in collection management. Moreover, many UCLA graduate students and faculty, as well as visiting scientists, study material in the collections for their research.