From roadkill to research: Collect dead wildlife to help science
The Bell Museum has long maintained a collection of preserved animal species, but Sushma Reddy wants to super-size that collection.
And she wants — in fact needs — Minnesotans to help.
“This project is really taking these things that would normally get thrown away or kind of looked on as, ‘oh, this is a sad event,’ and then people would walk on,’ said Reddy, the project leader. “But what we’re saying is let’s pick up these birds, let’s pick up these mammals and actually turn them into scientific data.”
Most of the animal specimens now in the collections of the Bell Museum and the Science Museum of Minnesota were collected around the Twin Cities. This project would expand the collection effort statewide.
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“Being able to integrate across all of Minnesota, different habitats, different degrees of urbanization, and a different latitudinal gradient can really shed light on species distributions,” said Sharon Jansa, the curator of mammals at the Bell Museum, and a University of Minnesota professor in ecology, evolution and behavior.
Species collected from all corners of the state could help answer questions about how animals are responding to climate change
“An example of that is roadkilled Virginia opossums,” said Keith Barker curator of genetic resources at the Bell Museum.
“Every year, they’re further and further north. And so, you see that those animals are changing their distributions in real time. We sample them pretty efficiently by running over them. But that’s data,” he said.
And the broader the geographic reach of that data, the more researchers can learn about what’s happening year to year.
But this dead animal collection is also about the future.
“We’re collecting for technologies that don’t exist yet to be applied to these specimens, and research questions that we haven’t thought of yet, but maybe future generations who look at things differently will think of,” said Catherine Early, Barbara Brown Chair of ornithology at the Science Museum of Minnesota.
“Some of these questions we can’t anticipate,” added Reddy. “And having the baseline information in the museum to go back to is what we’re trying to really build.”
The idea is to have a database, including tissue samples kept in freezers, that will allow researchers to look back in time for early signs of disease, environmental toxins or emerging viruses.
The statewide network project is funded by nearly $500,000 from the Minnesota Environment and Natural Resources Trust Fund.
Logistical details for the network are still being worked out, but Reddy expects to work with conservation groups and the Minnesota DNR to facilitate collection.
Reddy also wants to engage citizen scientists.
“We haven’t been able to predict how many things we’ll get. So that’s one thing that we’re a little concerned about,” said Reddy, who believes abundance is a good problem to have. And if it means that people get very excited and are out there helping us out and bringing in more of what they find, that would be great," she said.
Tips for wildlife salvagers
Caution is key if you want to become a wildlife salvager. Don’t become roadkill while collecting roadkill.
Fresh specimens are best. Don’t touch dead wildlife, said Reddy. Use a plastic bag to pick up the specimen and seal it tightly in the bag.
Include a note with the location, date and time as well as your contact information. Use a pencil to write that note, a blob of smudged ink won’t help document your specimen.
“And if people that you live with are okay with sharing a freezer space temporarily with some dead animals, then we would suggest doing that,” said Reddy.
The Bell Museum plans to have a website up soon that will provide details about collection, storage and drop off sites for people who want to participate.
The project will provide freezers to organizations at locations around the state where samples can be collected.
Twice a year, the museum will travel around the state to collect the frozen specimens.
Reddy also plans public education and outreach, especially in rural areas of the state.
What to collect? Common species and rare species are both important. They hope to gather everything from birds to bats to coyotes.
Size matters since space is limited, although the Bell Museum plans to expand storage as this project gets underway. The Science Museum has space to handle larger mammals.
“But we don’t want people showing up at our doorstep with a moose, when we’re not ready to take it,” said Early with a chuckle.
In reality, the researchers expect most of the specimens they receive to be smaller than a raccoon.
Reddy anticipates there will be a learning curve as they develop this somewhat unique network that she hopes will benefit science for generations to come.
“The idea of bringing in different organizations that are interested in various aspects of nature and conservation, as well as mobilizing citizen scientists to help us out in this scale is fairly novel. And we hope that it’ll be a system that can be modeled in other states as well.”
Correction (Dec. 28, 2023): An earlier version of this story misstated Catherine Early's title. It has now been corrected.