THE ROLE OF NATURAL-HISTORY COLLECTIONS IN DOCUMENTING SPECIES DECLINES

Efforts to document the decline of extant populations require a histor ical record of previous occurrences. Natural history museums contain s uch information for most regions of the world, at least at a coarse sp atial scale. Museum collections have been successfully used to analyse declines in a wide range of plants and animals, at spatial scales ran ging from single localities to large biotic and political regions, Nat ural history museum collections, when properly analysed, can be an inv aluable tool in documenting changes in biodiversity during the past ce ntury.