Environment and organisms

Environment is an important subject in 21st century due to bad effects of human activities and development. Environmental destruction has threatened many living organisms and caused extinction. The number of endangered species is increasing. In addition, artificially introduced alien species have proliferated explosively and had destructive and unpredictable effects on ecosystems. Precious domestic species can be expelled by competition or threatened by predation by offensive introduced species.

Geographic distribution of organisms is affected by global warming caused by fossil fuel consumption and also ocean acidification with increasing concentrations of carbon dioxide. These environmental changes are potentially preserved in biological and archeological specimens in museums and can be traced by in-depth analysis using specimens. Thus, museum collections can serve as archives of natural environment.

Takenori Sasaki