A small, hundred-year-old museum in Lima houses the second most important bird collection in South America after the Ciencias Naturales collection in Buenos Aires. A total of 241,200 specimens from 1,790 bird species – from the sovereign highland Andean condor to 126 hummingbird species – are housed in long, narrow drawers at the Universidad Nacional Mayor de San Marcos of the Natural History Museum of Peru. Each specimen has a carefully affixed tag with the date and place it was caught and the name of the collector. One of the oldest specimens corresponds to a 28 centimeters tall Chihuanco (Turdus fuscatur) collected by the Italian naturalist Antonio Raimondi in 1862. A note in clean and rounded writing explains, “Brown eyes, Huancayo.”
Ornithological collection of the most important scientific collection of birds in South AmericaAlex Bryce
The collection has expanded over the years thanks to expeditions by Raimondi, K. Jeslki, J. Stolzmann, OT Baron, Harvard University, Javier Ortiz de la Puente and María Koepcke. Now, with few resources, this state institution is making a big leap forward by setting up an ornithological molecular laboratory.
The ultimate goal is that all species in the world are known and housed in a repository available and free for any scientific research.
Letty Salinas, Director of the Ornithology Department of the Peruvian Museum
What will happen in this molecular laboratory? It will be possible to encode DNA and improve the records of genetic sequences in public databases to document and also protect the great biodiversity of Peru, which according to BirdLife is the country with the second most bird diversity after Colombia, as it has 1,860 species , of which 138 are endemic, meaning they have only been sighted on Peruvian territory, a world record.
This new step is possible thanks to the funding and the agreement signed with the Wildlife Alliance of the San Diego Zoo (USA), which have resulted in new high-tech equipment. In the United States, the San Diego Zoo’s Wildlife Alliance has managed to save the California condor from certain extinction for three decades, although victory is yet to be recorded as only 500 specimens fly over the Rocky Mountains again. By genetically managing the population, scientists facilitate the species’ mating and reproduction, a discreet operation whose effects are usually long-term as they tend to be monogamous. The San Diego Zoo’s genetic material is the largest in the world, although it focuses primarily on mammals. Therefore, this new agreement is a great encouragement for the Peruvian natural sciences.
The ultimate goal is that “all species in the world are known and preserved in a repository available and free of charge for any scientific research. Which molecules, which proteins explain the color and specific structures of the organism? This is the molecular information to be discovered,” explains biologist Letty Salinas, head of the Peruvian museum’s ornithology department.
An ark of life in danger of extinction
The Peruvian biologists’ adventure began early last decade when the Museum of Natural History of Peru joined the International Bar Code of Life Consortium (iBOL), a consortium of research institutions from 30 nations that announced its joining in 2015 half a million living species from all over the world and a first large reference library. In 2019, they set to work to achieve their second goal: obtaining 20 million genetic barcodes from 2.5 million species, a project led by scientist Paul Hebert, director of the university’s Center for Biodiversity Genomics (CBG). of Guelph, Canada .
Around 40% of Peruvian Amazon bird species lack information on the most representative molecular markers.
Letty Salinas, Director of the Ornithology Department of the Peruvian Museum
“These are planetary projects, comparable to the construction of the particle accelerator, which in this case will serve to secure the Ark of Life in the face of the sixth mass extinction of natural species,” emphasizes Salinas. The expert relies on data to talk about this decline: About 11,000 species of birds currently flutter on earth, but almost half have declined in number because their habitat has been reduced as a result of incessant urbanization, use of pesticides and climate change, according to the latest worldwide report by BirdLife published in September 2022 indicating that one in eight species is threatened with extinction.
With this agreement, the molecular information of the birds and mammals of the Peruvian Amazon, whose area is twice the size of Germany, is to be completed, a task of great magnitude. “Approximately 40% of the bird species of the Peruvian Amazon have no information on the most representative molecular markers,” says Salinas. “Filling this gap would make it possible to use molecular tools to monitor bird diversity, uncover the evolutionary history of Amazonian birds, and even fight against illegal wildlife trade,” he adds. Molecular analysis makes it possible to identify traded species and distinguish one animal from another on the black market. In addition, the scientists will use the genetic material that organisms leave behind in the environment for revolutionary studies of environmental DNA, “an emerging technique that increases the ability to document and quantify biodiversity,” Salinas said.
The Molecular Laboratory of the National University of San Marcos in Peru
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