Natural history collections recapitulate 200 years of faunal change

Changing species assemblages represent major challenges to ecosystems around the world. Retracing these changes is limited by our knowledge of past biodiversity. Natural history collections represent archives of biodiversity and are therefore an unparalleled source to study biodiversity changes. In the present study, we tested the value of natural history collections for reconstructing changes in the abundance and presence of species over time. In total, we scrutinized 17 080 quality-checked records for 242 epibenthic invertebrate species from the North and Baltic Seas collected throughout the last 200 years. Our approaches identified eight previously reported species introductions, 10 range expansions, six of which are new to science, as well as the long-term decline of 51 marine invertebrate species. The cross-validation of our results with published accounts of endangered species and neozoa of the area confirmed the results for two of the approaches for 49 to 55% of the identified species, and contradicted our results for 9 to 10%. The results based on relative record trends were less validated. We conclude that, with the proper approaches, natural history collections are an unmatched resource for recovering early species introductions and declines.


Recommendation? Accept with minor revision (please list in comments)
Comments to the Author(s) I have a great difficulty with this paper. This is very interesting and important contribution to science and shall be published. On the other hand it is a typical product of the "big data science" that can be produced about books in libraries, or minerals in geological museums. While this very paper is about living organisms. Yet, there is no natural history here -no information on the environmental context, climate, habitats or life traits of examined species. Authors put great effort to present in most objective and bias free way the issue of museal collections, still it is a description of collection of certain class of objects from a politically designated area (German Baltic is treated differently prior to II WW and before). If some species were collected in 1900 near Koningsberg in Eastern Preussia there is no reason to ignore its presence in 1980 Kaliningrad in Soviet Union -while the only problem is that recent one is not in the German museum. The analysis are very convincing, statistical treatment looks great -I am just curious what kind of results authors will get introducing the same method for the paleontological species -the same 200 years of history -will it show increase in abundance, distribution shifts and decline of some fossil species within 200 years time ? Still this paper may indicate some important phenomena, that needs to be checked -habitat wise, climate and industrial stress considered etc… I would recommend the paper to be published with a title changed to something like : "do changes in natural history collections reflect the changes in nature ? " With some sentence in the intro -or conclusion that authors are not presenting the natural phenomenon -rather indicate that it may exist.

Decision letter (RSOS-201983.R0)
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Dear Dr Ewers-Saucedo
On behalf of the Editors, we are pleased to inform you that your Manuscript RSOS-201983 "Natural history collections reconstruct 200 years of faunal change" has been accepted for publication in Royal Society Open Science subject to minor revision in accordance with the referees' reports. Please find the referees' comments along with any feedback from the Editors below my signature.
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Both reviewers also highlight the need for at least some discussion on the causes of the changes in the faunal assemblages over time, and a comparison with other data sources, such as data collected in long-term ecological studies. Reviewer 1 provides some suggestions.
The second reviewer also points out that a change in a country's territory may also limit the use of natural history collections (see discussion).
Sincerely, Reviewer comments to Author: Reviewer: 1 Comments to the Author(s) RSOS-201983: Ewers-Saucedo, C. et al. Natural history collections reconstruct 200 years of faunal change The paper presents the results of a very interesting approach to use natural history collection data to reconstruct faunal change. The paper reveals the importance of natural history collections as archives of biodiversity changes. The authors found trends in species changes especially for larger and dominant species similar to earlier studies for collection data. The paper is well written and structured and the authors used comprehensive statistical analyses for the analysis of their data. They discussed the pro and cons of using collection data, e.g. increasing sampling effort and correctness of species identification over time. Indeed, collection data can be used especially regarding presence/absence analysis of species as well as presence and increase of invasive species In contrast, the attempt to use collection data for reconstructing changes in species abundance over time might be a problem, because collections data especially of larger epifauna species might only represent a subsample of the total catch. I am missing in the discussion the comparison of the collection data with data from long-term ecological studies, such as the papers given below. Senckenberg am Meer is studying the epifauna communities in the south-eastern North Sea since 1998 on annual basis as part of Senckenberg´s LTER North Sea Benthos Observatory. Similar studies are continued in the Dutch EEZ by colleagues from NIOZ and in the UK EEZ by colleagues from CEFAS. The comparison with the ecological data will provide the possibility to compare and confirm trends in abundance in collection data at least for the last two to three decades. The discussion is in some parts repeating own results, which should be shortened and more focused to references. Being an ecologist, I am missing the discussion of reasons for the faunal change, which might not be the major focus of this paper, but will arise automatically while comparing trends with those fromfrom ecological studies. I recommend the paper for publication after major revision.

Reviewer: 2
Comments to the Author(s) I have a great difficulty with this paper. This is very interesting and important contribution to science and shall be published. On the other hand it is a typical product of the "big data science" that can be produced about books in libraries, or minerals in geological museums. While this very paper is about living organisms. Yet, there is no natural history here -no information on the environmental context, climate, habitats or life traits of examined species. Authors put great effort to present in most objective and bias free way the issue of museal collections, still it is a description of collection of certain class of objects from a politically designated area (German Baltic is treated differently prior to II WW and before). If some species were collected in 1900 near Koningsberg in Eastern Preussia there is no reason to ignore its presence in 1980 Kaliningrad in Soviet Union -while the only problem is that recent one is not in the German museum. The analysis are very convincing, statistical treatment looks great -I am just curious what kind of results authors will get introducing the same method for the paleontological species -the same 200 years of history -will it show increase in abundance, distribution shifts and decline of some fossil species within 200 years time ? Still this paper may indicate some important phenomena, that needs to be checked -habitat wise, climate and industrial stress considered etc… I would recommend the paper to be published with a title changed to something like : "do changes in natural history collections reflect the changes in nature ? " With some sentence in the intro -or conclusion that authors are not presenting the natural phenomenon -rather indicate that it may exist.

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See Appendix A.
Decision letter (RSOS-201983.R1) We hope you are keeping well at this difficult and unusual time. We continue to value your support of the journal in these challenging circumstances. If Royal Society Open Science can assist you at all, please don't hesitate to let us know at the email address below.
Dear Dr Ewers-Saucedo, It is a pleasure to accept your manuscript entitled "Natural history collections recapitulate 200 years of faunal change" in its current form for publication in Royal Society Open Science.
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Thank you for your fine contribution. On behalf of the Editors of Royal Society Open Science, we look forward to your continued contributions to the Journal. We have finally received two reviews of your paper. Both reviewers appreciate the approach used, and agree that natural history collections use in this way are valuable archives to document species turnover.
Both reviewers also highlight the need for at least some discussion on the causes of the changes in the faunal assemblages over time, and a comparison with other data sources, such as data collected in long-term ecological studies. Reviewer 1 provides some suggestions. A: We now added a paragraph to the discussion (p. 27) comparing the results of long-term ecological studies to our findings.
The second reviewer also points out that a change in a country's territory may also limit the use of natural history collections (see discussion). A: We fully agree with the reviewers' concern. We addressed this by removing geographic areas that were underrepresented at certain times from the analysis.

Sincerely,
Reviewer comments to Author: Reviewer: 1 Comments to the Author(s) RSOS-201983: Ewers-Saucedo, C. et al. Natural history collections reconstruct 200 years of faunal change The paper presents the results of a very interesting approach to use natural history collection data to reconstruct faunal change. The paper reveals the importance of natural history collections as archives of biodiversity changes. The authors found trends in species changes especially for larger and dominant species similar to earlier studies for collection data. The paper is well written and structured and the authors used comprehensive statistical analyses for the analysis of their data.