The National Collections of Natural History at Tel Aviv

University

There is no national museum of natural history in Israel, but two university

collections – Tel Aviv University and the Hebrew University of Jerusalem – are recognized as the national collections

Paleontology

Curators: Drs. Yuri Katz and Olga Orlov-Labkovsky

Physical anthropology

• Human evolution • Human history and evolution (Israeli dig

sites)

Curators: Profs. Yoel Rak and Israel Hershkovitz

Fishes (ca. 150,000 specimens in 14,400 lots)

• Mediterranean• Red Sea• Freshwater

Curator: Dr. Menachem Goren, Assoc. curator: Dr. Roi Holzman

Collections manager: Dr. Revital Zaslow, Nir Stern

Land vertebrates

• Mammals (ca. 12,000 specimens)• Birds (ca. 16,000 specimens)• Reptiles (ca. 16,000 specimens)• Amphibians (ca. 2000 specimens)

Curator: Dr. Shai MeiriTaxidermists: Igor Gavrilov, Dr. Stas VolinchikCollections managers: Daniel Berkowic, Arieh Landsman, Erez Maza

Mollusca(55000 specimens)

• Mediterranean• Red Sea• Freshwater• Terrestrial

Curator: Dr. Frida Ben AmiCollections manager: Henk

Mienis, Oz Ritner

Invertebrates (except mollusks & insects, hundreds of thousands of specimens)

• Mediterranean• Red Sea• Freshwater• Terrestrial

Curator: Prof. Yehuda BenayahuAssoc. Curators: Profs. Yossi Loya, Bela Galil, Micha Ilan

Collections managers: Dr. Revital Zaslow, Alex Shlagman, Dr. Sigal Shefer, Dr. Tamar Feldstein

Entomology (ca. 2-3 million specimens)

Curators: Drs. Amnon Freidberg, Vladimir Chikatunov, Vassily Kravchenko, Sergei Zonstein, Netta Dorchin

Assoc. curators: Drs. Dani Simon, Yael Mandelik, Profs. Avraham Hefez, Dan Gerling

Collections managers: Leonid Friedman, Alex Shlagman, Tirza Stern, and Drs. Moshe Guershon, Ermin Eunesco, Wolf Koslitzky, Tatiana Novoselsky.

Herbarium• Fungi• Lichens• Algae

Curator: Dr. Silvia BlumenfeldCurators emeriti: Profs. Margalit Galun, Jacob Garty, Nissan Binyamini, and Yaakov Lipkin

Molecular collection

Curator: Dr. Dorothee HuchonCollection manager: Dr. Tamar Feldstein

Tissues for DNA extraction are now routinely collected from all land vertebrates and some invertebrates

The collections together with the Zoological and the Botanical Gardens

are open to the public through a

variety of Nature Campus activities

Support to agricultural, conservation, and environmental research and decision-making

• Setting conservation priorities• Agriculture (pests & Biological

control, Pollinators)• Air traffic (civilian & military)

Biodiversity / Ecosystems

Mammal presence

maps

Green – adhering to the Kyoto protocol

Climatic and environmental data layers

+ ++BAU-

business as usual

climate models

MaxEnt model softwareMaximum entropy modeling of species geographic distributions

Steven J. Phillips, Robert P. Anderson, Robert E. Schapire Ecological Modelling, Vol 190/3-4 pp 231-259, 2006. http://www.cs.princeton.edu/~schapire/maxent/

Developing a comprehensive database

• Database is centralized, developed and managed by Dr. Menachem Goren aided by Tirza Stern

Developing a comprehensive database

• Database is centralized, developed and managed by Dr. Menachem Goren aided by Tirza Stern

• It is based upon ACCESS software

Why Access?

• Cheap to use and run• Stable (and so is Microsoft)• Compatible with just about everything• Easy to customize to the needs of

particular collections (different data are relevant for different taxa)

• Database is centralized, developed and managed by Dr. Menachem Goren aided by Tirza Stern

• It is based upon ACCESS software • It involves all ‘regular’ museum data fields

Developing a comprehensive database

Developing a comprehensive database

• Database is centralized, developed and managed by Dr. Menachem Goren aided by Tirza Stern

• It is based upon ACCESS software • It involves all ‘regular’ museum data fields• Already ca. 250,000 entries representing

ca. 2,000,000 specimens

Developing a comprehensive database

• Database is centralized, developed and managed by Dr. Menachem Goren aided by Tirza Stern

• It is based upon ACCESS software • It involves all ‘regular’ museum data fields• Already ca. 250,000 entries representing

ca. 2,000,000 specimens• Entemological collections are lagging

behind

Developing a comprehensive database

• Database is centralized, developed and managed by Dr. Menachem Goren aided by Tirza Stern

• It is based upon ACCESS software • It involves all ‘regular’ museum data fields• Already ca. 250,000 entries representing

ca. 2,000,000 specimens• Entemological collections are lagging

behind• Database is not web-based but data are

freely available upon request

Why not have an open-access database online?

• Some summary of available data appears on the museum website

• Ownership of data issues• Some technological challenges• Need to repot to funding agencies• We will get there someday

Most importantly (I think):

• Everything now entering the collection is immediately computerized and databased

• We are computerizing older material• Data are made freely available to those who

ask for them• We are moving forward in making sure

everybody can easily learn which data are available

What can a good database give us?

• We can access any specimen and the data associated with it

• We can identify deficiencies in our holdings (taxonomic, temporal, geographic, nature of specimens)

• We can use the data themselves to do science

Reptile species collected since

1980