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BRITISH ECOLOGICAL SOCIETY PRESS RELEASE

12 January 2006

Cracking open ecological secrets of museum egg collections

Swansea University ecologist Dr Patricia Lee has won a British Ecological Society (BES) grant to unlock the secrets of the millions of eggs held in museum collections worldwide.

The bird collection at London's Natural History Museum alone includes more than a million skins and eggs, collected over the past 200 years and representing 95% of all known bird species. While the skins have proved a good source of DNA and have been widely used by scientists to study many aspects of bird biology, using the eggs for similar research has so far been problematic.

According to Lee: “Unlike bird skin specimens, eggs can be difficult to identify on appearance because many bird species produce essentially identical eggs, and until recently it was not known if DNA could be obtained from blown eggs. Other work involving the Natural History Museum's collections has now demonstrated that enough DNA can sometimes be extracted from the residual dry membranes of duck eggs to identify the species of bird that the egg came from. This project will compare the quality and quantity of DNA that can be extracted from archive eggs with the DNA from skins. This will allow us to find out whether or not it is feasible to use DNA from archive eggs and find the most appropriate method of extracting the DNA.”

Lee's research will focus on eggs from snipe (Gallinago spp), an array of closely similar species that lay frequently indistinguishable eggs. These look like quail eggs, with dark splotches on a lighter background; the eggs are larger than a quail’s although smaller than a chicken’s. Her results will help make sure that eggs in museum collections are correctly identified, which in turn will allow much more ecological research to be done using them.

“Establishing DNA extraction methods for archive eggs - as has already been done with skins - will be an invaluable advance for ecologists in opening up a new resource for research and will further enhance the scientific value of archive biological material,” Lee says.

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Notes for editors

1. Further information and photographs are available from Becky Allen, Press Officer, British Ecological Society, tel: 01223 570016, mob: 07949 804317, email: beckyallen@ntlworld.com.

2. Dr Lee was awarded a Small Ecological Project Grant, which provides up to £2,500 to promote all aspects of ecological research and ecological survey. A full list of grants available from the British Ecological Society is available at www.britishecologicalsociety.org/articles/grants. Additional funding for the project was also provided by the Natural History Museum.

3. The British Ecological Society is a learned society, a registered charity and a company limited by guarantee. Established in 1913 by academics to promote and foster the study of ecology in its widest sense, the Society has 5,000 members in the UK and abroad. Further information is available at www.britishecologicalsociety.org.

4. The Natural History Museum’s egg collection represents a unique scientific and historical resource of worldwide importance. The collection one of the largest and most scientifically comprehensive in the world, and includes examples from almost every family of birds. The collection comprises of 'blown' eggs from all over the world, it is estimated that there are over 400,000 sets. The oldest egg specimens in the Natural History Museum were collected in the 18th century, but the vast majority of the eggs date from the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The collection is particularly strong in material from the western Palaearctic, Indian sub-continent and Melanesia.

Copyright 2007 British Ecological Society. All Rights Reserved