Misidentification of land snails in museum collections

• In Event: Conservation Ecology Oral Session & Section Meeting

Abstract

Organisms preserved in natural history museums are a primary source of data for many aspects of species’ biology including genetics and geographical distribution and a record of how these might change over time or in the face of changing environmental conditions. These museum data can be used to prioritize funding and efforts for conservation and are increasingly accessible online, allowing for data use without physical visits to the collection. Therefore, it is important to understand the quality of this data. In this study we investigate the quality of museum record data for land snails, a group that suffers from severe taxonomic impediment and which has received minimal attention since the 1940s. We confirmed the identifications of 4023 lots from a survey of two Texas museum collections, both of which had snail taxonomists as curators. In this survey, we found that 42% of land snail lots had incorrect names with about half of these due to outdated taxonomy and half due to misidentification. Based on this finding, we suggest that analysis of unverified museum records of land snails, such as those from an online database, would likely incorporate so much error that results would be erroneous.

Authors

• Jeff Nekola, University of New Mexico

• Ben Hutchins, Texas Parks and Wildlife

• Briante Najev, University of Texas Rio Grande Valley

• Alison Schofield, University of Texas Rio Grande Valley

• Kathryn Elizabeth Perez, University of Texas Rio Grande Valley