RAPID: CSBR: Emergency Rescue of the Saint Louis University's Genetic Resources & Collection to The University of Alabama Ichthyological Collection

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Saint Louis University Museum's Genetic Resources & Collections (GRC) amassed a collection of approximately 63,000 catalogued and vouched specimens or tissues from over 6,600 species of freshwater and marine fishes since its beginning in 1983. The GRC contains important temporal samples, extensive within-species geographic sampling for North American taxa, a broad taxonomic sampling of freshwater fishes from Asia, with an emphasis on SE Asia, and many globally distributed marine species. Many of these specimens were collected with funding from NSF during Tree of Life and Planetary Biotic Inventory projects. On May 25, 2017, Macelwane Hall, home to the Museum and GRC, experienced a fire that caused extensive structural, water, and soot damage throughout the building. Following this incident, Saint Louis University determined that it would no longer support or maintain either the museum or the GRC. Thus, without rescue this extremely valuable collection would otherwise be lost to the global scientific community. The goal of this project is to transfer the GRC to The University of Alabama Ichthyological Collection (UAIC). Transferring this collection into UAIC will ensure long-term curation of this collection, as well as providing access to the specimens through our web portal (specifyweb.as.ua.edu) or from our four distributed information project partners (GBIF, FishNet2, VertNet, and iDigBio Hub). Student research opportunities in molecular systematics, population and conservation genetics, genomics, and transcriptomics will be enhanced due to the taxonomic diversity and global distribution of specimens and tissues contained in this invaluable collection. This project transfers ownership of Saint Louis University Museum's Genetic Resources & Collection (GRC) to The University of Alabama Ichthyological Collection (UAIC), providing immediate rescue and curatorial intervention to a very large and valuable collection of frozen and 95% ethanol-preserved specimens and tissue samples from freshwater and marine fishes collected from around the world. Addition of the GRC specimens into UAIC?s Tissues and DNA Collection greatly enriches and supplements materials currently in UAIC in both number of species and specimens. Many specimens in the GRC collected from Southeast Asia are irreplaceable and represent time-intensive research documentation. In addition, genomic, transcriptomic, and proteomic studies are possible with these samples because many of the tissues or whole-body specimens were placed directly into liquid nitrogen upon collection and have been maintained continuously at -80 degrees C. By uniting these collections and providing access to these specimens or tissues through multiple biodiversity information distribution partners, the scientific community will continue to have access to an invaluable genetic resource that documents aquatic biodiversity from around the world. In addition, digital data for these specimens will become available through a portal (specifyweb.as.ua.edu) or from four distributed information resources (GBIF, FishNet2, VertNet, and iDigBio).This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.