Conserving biodiversity requires the understanding of its evolution (modalities and processes); these themes presently involve a large community of scientists in Montpellier, with its roots in the naturalistic research efforts which resulted in the very early creation of collections. This ancient heritage is still being enhanced through the research efforts on present and past biodiversity. Today, collections are being digitized and thus develop into reference data bases with improved access and visibility.

The items in collection are quite diverse: soft tissues, skeletal tissues, DNA, chromosomes, whole specimens of extant species, fossils, pollens or living organisms. They encompass a wide diversity of organisms (fauna, flora, microorganisms) with herbaria, pollen reference slides, Mediterranean marine and terrestrial animals and plants, mice and rodents (“animal models”), live mouse strains, marine bacteria cultures, tropical, Mediterranean or other fish species (freshwater or marine), fossil faunae and florae as well as amphibians and reptiles from the Western Palearctic. 

Research studies use these collections as a support by means of diverse and innovative techniques and know-hows: macroscopic and microscopic observations, molecular analysis, sequencing, etc. that rely on a broad spectrum of approaches: morphometry, spectrometry, cytogenomics, gene expression, genomics, modelling, phylogeny and phylogeography. Such research meets one of the major challenges of our scientific community: knowing, understanding and conserving biodiversity; these goals are translated into three main sets of issues:

Describing biodiversity

The first step in understanding biodiversity is describing it precisely by: inventorying and identifying species, documenting their morphological or genetic variation but also defining criteria for morphological identification to allow managers and naturalists to identify the organisms they encounter. This systematical approach combines the study of morphological traits through specimen analysis, and, increasingly, through the study of molecular traits drawing on genetic resource collections (tissues and DNA). The Montpellier collections thus document present biodiversity, at the scale of regions (e.g. North Africa, the Mediterranean or Western Arctic) or continents (Africa, South America, Europe, Asia) but also at the deep time scale (from Paleozoic to Quaternary).

Understanding the mechanisms that create and maintain biodiversity

Today’s biodiversity is the result of a long evolutionary history marked by diversification and extinction events. Understanding how evolution shapes diversity patterns is at the core of evolution biology. The collections allow studying phenotype or genotype variations over space, but also over time since they allow the study of traits in past populations.

At present, through the association of genetic and phenotypic variability patterns studies, the collections enable identifying the determiners of diversity evolution and allow the analysis of diversification processes.

Predicting changes in biodiversity.

Documenting changes over time in species distribution and abundance allows evaluating the ability of organisms and communities to respond to global change (climate or anthropic). To predict the evolution of this diversity, research makes use of modelling to simulate scenarios of change. The reliability of tested models, be they mechanistic or statistical, depend on the soundness of their attached data regarding biodiversity distribution over time and space.

Due to their wealth of specimens and the quality of the related data, collections are an essential tool to document organisms past and present distribution; they therefore ensure the quality of the decision-making tools necessary to face the biological and society challenges linked to the 6^th extinction.

It is therefore easily seen here that the richness and scientific value of the Montpellier collections make their long-term preservation pivotal to their future exploitation.