Collections for Educational Purposes

This particular type of material doesn’t necessarily need to contain collection data (date, origin, geographical location, collector identification details, sampling techniques, etc), but does need to be comprehensive enough to be used for educational purposes (as the title suggests). This material is to be used for providing educational services in relation to various types of biological groups. The most common scenario is to find specimens of easily acquired types of species (the collection), representing a general overview of the taxonomic group to be studied. Due to the amount of handling of this material, sometimes by people with little or no experience, a degree of species deterioration is often inevitable over time (often occurring over a very short period of time). The loss of course material is therefore a common occurrence. 

A good example of this type of collection is a group of insects in which an example of every order can be found, gathered for the purposes of teaching students how to identify various different groups. Database records for this particular collection should specify when material has been lost, the correct procedure simply being not to use this information any more, instead of deleting the record from the database. 

In order to improve the quality of the educational material collections, PPBio should encourage an enhanced exchange system between selected universities so that each collection can then receive representative examples from every taxonomic group, from many types of different environments (even those that are not literally close to marine ecosystems, for example).

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