Urban environments are among the fastest changing habitats on the planet, and this change has evolutionary implications for the organisms inhabiting them. Herein, we demonstrate that natural history collections are critical resources for urban evolution studies. The specimens housed in these collections provide great potential for diverse types of urban evolution research, and strategic deposition of specimens and other materials from contemporary studies will determine the resources and research questions available to future urban evolutionary biologists. As natural history collections are windows into the past, they provide a crucial historical timescale for urban evolution research. While the importance of museum collections for research is generally appreciated, their utility in the study of urban evolution has not been explicitly evaluated. Here, we: (a) demonstrate that museum collections can greatly enhance urban evolution studies, (b) review patterns of specimen use and deposition in the urban evolution literature, (c) analyze how urban versus rural and native versus nonnative vertebrate species are being deposited in museum collections, and (d) make recommendations to researchers, museum professionals, scientific journal editors, funding agencies, permitting agencies, and professional societies to improve archiving policies. Our analyses of recent urban evolution studies reveal that museum specimens can be used for diverse research questions, but they are used infrequently. Further, although nearly all studies we analyzed generated resources that could be deposited in natural history collections (e.g., collected specimens), a minority (12%) of studies actually did so. Depositing such resources in collections is crucial to allow the scientific community to verify, replicate, and/or re‐visit prior research. Therefore, to ensure that adequate museum resources are available for future urban evolutionary biology research, the research community—from practicing biologists to funding agencies and professional societies—must make adjustments that prioritize the collection and deposition of urban specimens.

中文翻译：

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自然历史收藏是当代和未来城市演化研究的重要资源


城市环境是地球上变化最快的栖息地之一，这种变化对居住在其中的生物体具有进化意义。在此，我们证明自然历史收藏是城市演化研究的重要资源。这些馆藏中的标本为不同类型的城市演化研究提供了巨大的潜力，当代研究中标本和其他材料的战略沉积将决定未来城市演化生物学家可用的资源和研究问题。由于自然历史收藏是了解过去的窗口，它们为城市演变研究提供了重要的历史时间尺度。虽然博物馆藏品对于研究的重要性得到普遍认可，但它们在城市演变研究中的效用尚未得到明确评估。在这里，我们：（a）证明博物馆藏品可以极大地促进城市演化研究，（b）回顾城市演化文献中标本使用和沉积的模式，（c）分析城市与农村以及本地与非本地脊椎动物物种的变化情况存放在博物馆藏品中，以及 (d) 向研究人员、博物馆专业人员、科学期刊编辑、资助机构、许可机构和专业协会提出建议，以改进归档政策。我们对近期城市演化研究的分析表明，博物馆标本可用于多种研究问题，但使用频率较低。此外，尽管我们分析的几乎所有研究都产生了可以存放在自然历史收藏中的资源（例如收集的标本），但少数（12％）的研究实际上这样做了。 将这些资源存放在馆藏中对于科学界验证、复制和/或重新审视先前的研究至关重要。因此，为了确保未来的城市进化生物学研究有足够的博物馆资源，研究界——从执业生物学家到资助机构和专业协会——必须做出调整，优先考虑城市标本的收集和保存。