Duke University has decided to close its herbarium, a collection of 825,000 specimens of plants, fungi and algae that was established more than a century ago. The collection, one of the largest and most diverse in the country, has helped scientists map the diversity of plant life and record the impact of humans on the environment.
The university’s decision has left researchers upset. “This is such a devastating blow to biodiversity science,” said Erica Edwards, the curator of the Yale Herbarium. “The whole community is both shocked and outraged.”
Scientific societies have also protested the move. “Duke’s decision to abdicate responsibility for the herbarium specimens sets a terrible precedent,” the Natural Science Collections Alliance wrote in a letter at the university last Friday.
The alliance, along with six other scientific societies, approved a report asking Duke to reconsider closing the herbarium. As of Wednesday, it had gathered more than 11,000 signatures.
“It’s quite shocking that such a large collection at a wealthy university could be considered necessary,” said Regina Baucom, a plant geneticist at the University of Michigan.
In an email sent last week to herbarium staff, Susan Alberts, dean of natural sciences at Duke, said the university had decided the collection should be moved elsewhere in the next two to three years.
“This is a loss for Duke,” she said in an interview with the Times. “We feel it is the responsible thing to do to ensure that this collection is preserved for posterity in a place designed to house it.”
So far, however, no party has agreed to give him a home. “There are no herbs that could absorb something like this,” said Kathleen Pryer, the herbarium’s director. “I’m very worried that it will end up in a warehouse somewhere and be forgotten.”
Herbariums have been a mainstay of biology for centuries. Botanists return from expeditions with dried leaves, flowers, stems and seeds, which are then stored for posterity. Some specimens even formed the basis for the naming of new species.
But botanicals are also valuable because they include plants collected over long periods of time, helping scientists track the effects of humans on the environment. Some collections have shown that plants have they changed their range as the planet has warmed, for example.
Collections have become even more useful as technology has advanced. With improved DNA sequencing, researchers began to extraction of genetic material from dried plant specimens, tackling age-old scientific questions such as the origin of the world’s crops.
Botanists have not finished documenting the variety of plants. And every year, they identify new species that need to be saved because many are already threatened with extinction.
In recent decades, a number of other universities have closed their botanical gardens, unwilling to retain the space required for their collections or the money required to maintain them. In 2017, the University of Louisiana at Monroe cleared half a million specimens to make room for new athletic facilities.
The samples were saved from destruction at the 11th hour when they were moved to other collections that found room for them.
The Duke Herbarium was founded in 1921 and has grown steadily in the 103 years since. Researchers not only study plants, but also other species, such as lichens, to examine the effects of air pollution on the environment.
Just last March, Duke University was boasting about climate research conducted in the herbarium at a promotional video.
But Rytas Vilgaly, a fungus specialist at the herbarium, said it had been clear for some time that Duke was considering closing it. “We’ve been seeing the writing on the wall for years now,” he said.
Dr. Pryor said that last year, Duke administrators asked her to write petitions to justify continued support for the herb. But after talks with a potential donor fell through in January, Dr. Alberts informed Dr. Pryor that he was closing.
“It’s really a tragic state of affairs,” Dr. Pryor said.
Dr. Alberts said Duke’s biology department needs to spread its support in many areas. “We’re not going to dictate to the department that it has to hire in these areas in perpetuity,” he said. “We are a university with limited resources.”
Duke University has one endowment amounting to 11.6 billion dollars.
Dr. Alberts also emphasized that Duke’s plan was to move the herbarium somewhere else. “We’re not destroying anything,” he said.
Jonathan Shaw, a biologist at Duke, said he was negotiating to have the moss and related plants taken by another herb carrier. “I have high hopes that we can move the collections to places with a real commitment to biodiversity,” he said.
But Dr. Pryor said that even foundations that have expressed interest were unsure whether they could find the money to take on parts of the collection. He was afraid that parts of the herb might get lost in the shuffle.
Brent Mishler, a former herbarium curator at Duke who ran the herbarium at the University of California, Berkeley, for 30 years, said Duke’s decision would also mean the loss of a strong tradition of academic research into plant diversity.
“It is a shame for Duke to abandon research and education in biodiversity studies,” he said.