Right on Kew
As the grand traditions of systematic biology are marginalized by fashionable, but less informative, trends, one of its greatest research resources may soon be marginalized, too
I have just added my signature to a petition to keep the RBG Kew herbarium on the site of the main gardens, in spite of pronouncements from Kew that the move is a done deal. It is reasonable to ask what thinking is behind a proposal to separate one of the greatest botanical research resources in the world from the Garden’s equally impressive scientists and living collections. The living collection, of course, has an important scientific mission beyond the awesome display of plant diversity and beauty which draws more than 2 million visitors each year.
As a taxonomist, I sense disturbing implications and symbolism in Kew Gardens’ proposal to relocate its herbarium to a remote site. Aspects of the proposal sound reasonable enough individually and at face value, but, viewed in a broader context it becomes clear why moving the herbarium would be a misstep of historic proportions.
RBG Kew herbarium, “old wing." Photo: Ian Alexander. CC BY-SA 4.0
What follows is my personal reaction to the idea, specifically as presented by Kew itself on a Web posting dated August 9th.
Reading between the lines, three things bring underlying problems to light. First, creating a library of digital images of specimens would, according to Kew, establish a library of 8.5 million high-resolution images of specimens by 2026 at a cost of £28 million. This virtual herbarium would join other U.K. collections in the Distributed System of Scientific Collections. While this comes with obvious benefits, from ease of access to virtual repatriation of specimens to countries of origin, I fear that there may be a darker motive behind this otherwise worthy goal.
Second, a new facility for the herbarium, we are told, would enhance the physical protection of collections from fire, flood, environmental fluctuations, and pests. Who could argue with that?
And third, facilities vacated by the herbarium would open space for modern laboratories and other facilities for scientists and staff. Again, seemingly wonderful stuff. So, what’s the problem? My concerns arise from what is not said in Kew’s post.
While the article states that a new herbarium wing has historically been added every three to four decades to deal with a flood of newly accessioned specimens, it is implied, but not explicitly stated, that similar future expansion would be easier at the new facility. Even assuming this is so, where are assurances that herbarium growth will remain a high priority for Kew? It is certainly not stated as a goal. We are facing the most rapid loss of plant species in human history. Many species not collected and incorporated into herbaria over the next century or two will go extinct without a trace leaving permanent gaps in our knowledge of biosphere and evolutionary history. This is an unprecedented challenge to expand herbaria rapidly. While the new site may have the real estate to build additional herbarium space in the future, I am curious whether the kind of expansion which should be expected from this world-leading institution is really part of long-term planning. It is concerning that the emphasis seems to be more on the quality of the facilities for storing existing plant specimens than a bold, clear plan for a massive expansion of collections commensurate with the rate of plant extinction. I realize that a commitment to substantial expansion could bolster the argument for a new site, removed from the congestion of London, but that consideration is trumped by scientific opportunities that are only fully exploited if scientists, labs and the herbarium are located in the same place.
One could infer that digitizing herbarium sheets comes with the expectation that specimens will, in the future, be examined as high-resolution images online rather than in person. While routine activities, such as confirming identifications, may often be carried out through online image consultation, other important aspects of comparative botany and high-quality taxonomy require that herbarium specimens and botanists be in one and the same location. Digital libraries reduce wear and tear on specimens and broaden ease of access to certain visual information, but they have limitations and can never be understood as substitutes for the real thing. Serious botanical research will always require taxon experts to handle and examine, and re-examine, and sometimes manipulate or dissect, the specimens themselves, for a variety of technical reasons.
Finally, and to me most concerning, is the almost gleeful announcement that “Moving the herbarium collections will unlock the development of the existing herbarium buildings at Kew Gardens to create a new ‘Science Quarter.’… [for] new laboratories, education facilities, seminar rooms and improved workspaces for our staff and students”. This is concerning because it may foretell a future in which science projects are carried out in gleaming new molecular laboratories separated by miles from the herbarium. A cynical reading of the plan from the outside—and, for the sake of science, I hope this interpretation is mistaken—is as follows: take pictures of herbarium sheets; lock sheets away in a safe, environmentally-controlled warehouse; and free up space to build molecular laboratories for research that does not substantially draw upon or contribute to the information content of collections, but which is both trendy and lucrative.
All of this feels eerily familiar to me. I was Keeper of Entomology in the Natural History Museum in London at the time that plans for Darwin Centre II were implemented. That process was even more nakedly cynical. A new building—architecturally beautiful, inviting visitors to see behind the scenes, and creating state-of-the-art environmental controls for collections among its benefits—was planned so that it was not large enough to house existing insect collections, much less room to grow in response to the biodiversity crisis. Even worse, the taxon experts who study the collections daily, previously embedded in collection ranges, were physically separated from them, although by meters, not miles. This was seemingly driven by a dystopian view of the future in which collections are treated as historical artifacts and mothballed, while science is done in gleaming molecular labs unencumbered by the weight of expanding, studying and curating physical specimen collections. In spite of the dominance of molecular data in recent decades, it is evident to anyone truly interested in understanding plant diversity and evolution that this assumption is false and that collections will, out of necessity, remain essential, rich repositories of knowledge of both living and extinct species. What molecular data can tell us is very important and useful, but also incredibly limiting in respect to understanding species and characters themselves and the steps in their evolutionary history.
It can be argued that systematic biologists arrived late to the reductionist party. The idea that we can understand the diversity and history of life by reducing it to its molecular components is demonstrably wrongheaded. And fields like physics, once also seduced by reductionism, have rediscovered the importance of emergent properties that must be studied on a higher level of organization. In fact, the most surprising and interesting aspects of life have to do with complexity and emergent attributes of species that could never have been predicted from their molecular precursors. It is, of course, vital to science that molecular genetics remain a dynamic frontier, including an enhanced role in interpreting radically diverged homologous characters. But, for the goals of systematic biology itself, the most important work has to do with describing, comparing and interpreting improbable, and improbably complex, features of species—the autapomorphies and synapomorphies which make the study of species and clades most intellectually exciting and satisfying.
My last podcast relates to the Kew herbarium move. It examined institutional aspirations as expressed in mission statements. There is an unmistakable trend among botanical gardens and natural history museums toward mimicking research universities and prioritizing already-popular, easily-funded biological research that could be done anywhere; and away from growing, developing and using collections to advance our knowledge of species, clades, characters, and evolutionary history—as well as the biosphere—in ways only possible with great collections. Were it not for the excellent taxonomy that continues to be done by scientists in such institutions—seemingly in spite of the priorities of the institutions themselves—one could conclude that, as a class of institutions, they have truly lost the plot and no longer understand what they can contribute to science and society that is unique.
Science and society desperately need insights, knowledge and leadership possible only from the development and use of collections for taxonomic research. By logic, necessity and urgency, we are entering a period that should be the golden age of species exploration and natural history collection development. There will be no second chances to explore and inventory the full diversity of species as they exist in the waning decades of the Holocene or to preserve evidence of the amazing history of species diversification on our planet. This is something only collections-based institutions can achieve. Physically separating researchers from collections is among the worst things we could possibly do at this moment in time. We urgently need clear-eyed institutional leaders who recognize what is at stake if museums and botanical gardens dilute their efforts by behaving as bush-league universities. Our planet needs world-class, taxonomic-centered research and inventory initiatives lead by collections-based institutions. Such collections, and the information they contain, is the greatest gift we can bestow upon current and future generations. This does not deny or detract from the immediate and urgent challenges to conservation and the environmental sciences, but such issues are being aggressively pursued by countless universities, institutes, organizations and agencies. Only botanical gardens maintaining herbaria and natural history museums bear the enormous burden of exploring and documenting the diversity and history of life through the preservation of specimens and associated data. No one else can or will do it.
I can do no better in summary than to quote from comments left on the petition web site by my esteemed colleague and friend, Professor Robert Scotland, of Oxford University, who said: “Very few understand the dynamic and important role of plant collections for biodiversity and conservation research at a time of environmental devastation. To isolate the largest and most important global herbarium collection from its associated living collections and the lab scientists and students studying those collections, is an act of astonishing ignorance.” So, it’s time for museums and botanical gardens to wise-up, use rather than hide away collections, and accept their unique role in our response to the biodiversity crisis. In a congested field of institutions competing for limited funds, it’s good to be different and rise above the crowd.
References
Petition: Keep the Kew herbarium at Kew.
https://www.change.org/p/keep-the-kew-herbarium-at-kew
Relocating Kew’s herbarium for the future of our collections: RBG Kew is exploring building a new research facility at Thames Valley Science Park (TVSP) for our vast collection of preserved plant specimens. Royal Botanic Gardens Kew. 9 August 2023.
https://www.kew.org/read-and-watch/relocating-kews-herbarium
Knapton, Sarah (2023) Former Kew director [Professor Sir Ghillean Prance] denounces ‘appalling’ plans to move plant library to Reading: In a letter to the Telegraph, the eminent botanist warned the move would ‘seriously damage the greatest botanic garden in the world.’ The Telegraph, 10 August.