{"id":276234,"date":"2021-04-26T21:35:52","date_gmt":"2021-04-26T21:35:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sciblogs.co.nz\/?p=276234"},"modified":"2022-08-17T21:21:29","modified_gmt":"2022-08-17T21:21:29","slug":"lost-in-translation-or-deliberate-falsification","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.otago.ac.nz\/lost-worlds\/2021\/04\/26\/lost-in-translation-or-deliberate-falsification\/","title":{"rendered":"Lost in translation or deliberate falsification?"},"content":{"rendered":"

I\u2019m staring at an evolutionary tree of New Zealand wrens when \u2018damn it Travers\u2019 rings out. The infamous Victorian collector Henry Hamersley Travers had just struck again.<\/strong><\/p>\n

In front of me also are the delicate historical skins of some of these tiny wrens, frozen in time since the day they were collected. While some are still with us like the p\u012bwauwau rock wren<\/a> (Xenicus gilviventris<\/em>), others are extinct like m\u0101tuhituhi bush wren<\/a> (X. longipes<\/em>) that was only driven to extinction by rats a mere ten years before I was born. More so than fossil bones, these precious skins are hauntingly beautiful in their detail. No need to infer what they looked like alive.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s skins like these, and other historical museum specimens, that offer scientists and conservationists a unique window into how our unique biodiversity was faring at the time of European arrival. Having survived the impacts of Polynesian colonisation, some by the skin of their beak, our biodiversity was about to face a new swathe of threats from further environmental modification, ruthless predators, and the museum trade.<\/p>\n

Some important historical collectors in Aotearoa are household names like Sir Walter Buller<\/a>, author of Buller\u2019s Birds of New Zealand. I still remember the thrill of looking through a copy at Bruce Thomas\u2019s (of Breaksea Island<\/a> rat eradication fame) house down the road from my childhood home. Other collectors will be new to most people such as Andreas Reischek<\/a> and Henry Hamersley Travers<\/a>. While the museum trade no doubt contributed to the extinction of some species such as the huia<\/a> (Heteralocha acutirostris<\/em>) and Auckland Island merganser<\/a> (Mergus australis<\/em>), it\u2019s fitting that historical specimens are now providing the vital who, where, what, wren \u2013 biological heritage if you will \u2013 that allows for evidence-based ecological restoration and species translocation.<\/p>\n

In geology there\u2019s a saying, \u201cthe past is the key to the present<\/em>\u201d and I would argue, also the future. In other words, when conserving species, ignore their past at your peril. But what if that history was wrong?<\/p>\n

It all started with a rock wren<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

In the collections of the British Museum of Natural History lies a rock wren that caught the attention of New Zealand\u2019s Department of Conservation (DOC). But not just any rock wren. The label attached to this old skin said \u201cRimutaka<\/em> Ranges<\/em>\u201d, in the lower North Island. The little bird was collected before the 1930s, though the precise collection date and collector are unknown. This lack of historical information set the alarm bells ringing.<\/p>\n

Either we had the first known historical record of rock wren from the North Island, allowing DOC to potentially translocate individuals from the South Island, or we had a rock wren from the South Island with a dodgy label. Another possibility was that this little bird wasn\u2019t even a rock wren but an imposter, a morphologically similar bush wren masquerading as a rock wren. Preserved within this precious specimen are fragments of its genetic blueprint, breadcrumbs that sleuths can use to reconstruct an individuals\u2019 true biological heritage.<\/p>\n

What Alex found<\/a> would illustrate that you can\u2019t take metadata associated with historical museum specimens at face value. The good news was that this specimen was a rock wren. The bad news, it wasn\u2019t from the Remutaka\u2019s. Far from it. Rather it was collected from southern Fiordland. Sorry, no historical record of a North Island rock wren here folks.<\/p>\n

Not only that, but skins from the infamous Henry Travers, including one sourced from \u201cNelson<\/em>\u201d in 1899, and three skins collected in 1897 from \u201cOtago Province<\/em>\u201d, had dubious locality data. The rock wren specimens from Otago were collected in the northern South Island, while the Nelson skin was from southern Fiordland. Damn and blast. So was this an isolated incident?<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
Solve the puzzle: Four shag skins assigned to three locations, yet two are wrong. Image from Rawlence et al. (2014)<\/a>.<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Romanes eunt domus<\/em><\/strong> or Romani ite domum<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

What Alex and I had discovered was just the tip of the iceberg, the latest in a long line of historical offenses conducted by Travers and others.<\/p>\n

Travers wasn\u2019t just guilty of suspect labelling of rock wren, but many other birds too. Eight hoiho yellow-eyed penguins<\/a> (Megadyptes antipodes<\/em>) that were collected from Auckland and Campbell Islands in 1893 or 1894 by Travers were actually from the South Island<\/a> of New Zealand. Likely, he never visited these far-flung islands at the time.<\/p>\n

Scientists at Victoria University were conned by him as well<\/a>. Using a rare specimen of the extinct Macquarie Island parakeet<\/a> (Cyanoramphus erythrotis<\/em>) from Canterbury Museum, they concluded this species was genetically identical to Reischek\u2019s parakeet<\/a> (C. hochstetteri<\/em>) from the distant Antipodes Island. Turns out Travers never visited Macquarie Island but did visit Antipodes Island, and the scientists had sequenced a Reischek\u2019s parakeet<\/a>!<\/p>\n

Travers, until recently<\/a>, was also credited with the discovery of the now-extinct tutukiwi South Island snipe<\/a> (Coenocorypha iredalei<\/em>), which was described based on skins purchased by Travers himself. Turns out only seven of the 24 known specimens have correct locality data, and that Travers didn\u2019t collect any of them.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s not just Travers who is guilty. Remember Sir Walter Buller? Turns out Buller was pretty dodgy as well (I highly recommend reading The Reluctant Conservationist). Ironic really that the kid who loved Buller\u2019s Birds of New Zealand ended up catching him in the act<\/a>. While sampling blue-eyed shags<\/a> collected by Buller in Canterbury Museum I noticed some of these birds were not like the other. A shag collected from Stewart Island was actually from the Auckland Islands, 400 km to the south. Another specimen, from the Chatham Islands, was from the Auckland Islands \u2013 a whopping 1500 km to the southeast.<\/p>\n

Lost in translation or deliberate falsification?<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Were all these travesties a result of deliberate fraud or poor record-keeping? It\u2019s very hard to prove fraud. Competitive behaviour would have been common between rival collectors like Travers and Buller\u2026just think of the dinosaur bone wars<\/a> between Cope and Marsh. Extinct species like the Macquarie Island parakeet would have been worth more than Reischek\u2019s parakeet. Hoiho from far-flung locales<\/a> are worth more than their mainland counterparts that can still be seen today a short drive from my house. Money, money, money, it\u2019s a rich man\u2019s world.<\/p>\n

On the other hand, poor record keeping is a given. None of Buller\u2019s specimens in Te Papa Tongarewa<\/a> have locality details on the original labels, and those in the American Museum of Natural History have multiple labels with different information indicating numerous sales of the same bird by Buller. He knew how to distinguish blue-eyed shags at the time the skins in Canterbury Museum were collected, so why did Buller get their identifications so wrong? \u00a0Ad hoc labelling, sometimes years after the fact, and hastily prepared sales lists from memory, combined with a failure to verify species identifications, certainly didn\u2019t help things.<\/p>\n

So, the next time you are in a museum basement trying to work out where our precious natural taonga were in the past and how that might inform conservation management, tread carefully, follow the breadcrumbs, and just remember these historical collectors are not the messiah, they\u2019re just a bunch of very naughty boys.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I\u2019m staring at an evolutionary tree of New Zealand wrens when \u2018damn it Travers\u2019 rings out. The infamous Victorian collector Henry Hamersley Travers had just struck again. In front of me also are the delicate historical skins of some of these tiny wrens, frozen in time since the day they were collected. While some are … Continue reading “Lost in translation or deliberate falsification?”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":40066,"featured_media":280683,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[87395,12254],"tags":[87406,87429,87447,87483,87576],"class_list":["post-276234","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-environment-and-ecology","category-science","tag-ancient-dna","tag-conservation-management","tag-ecological-restoration","tag-historical-museum-specimens","tag-translocation"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.otago.ac.nz\/lost-worlds\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/276234","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.otago.ac.nz\/lost-worlds\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.otago.ac.nz\/lost-worlds\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.otago.ac.nz\/lost-worlds\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/40066"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.otago.ac.nz\/lost-worlds\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=276234"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.otago.ac.nz\/lost-worlds\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/276234\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.otago.ac.nz\/lost-worlds\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/280683"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.otago.ac.nz\/lost-worlds\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=276234"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.otago.ac.nz\/lost-worlds\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=276234"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.otago.ac.nz\/lost-worlds\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=276234"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}