What do Saliega have in common, the first lynx that gave birth in the captivity breeding program, and the last wolf that left his mark in Andalusia? Well, the two are preserved in a basement in Seville, on the island of La Cartuja, where the one that could be said that is the backup copy of the Iberian fauna … and half the world. These two copies are integrated into the scientific collections of the Doñana Biological Station (EBD)a kind of scientific novice that preserves samples of more than 140,000 specimens that also serve to support countless research.
The collections are located at the headquarters of this agency under the Higher Council for Scientific Research (CSIC) And they have their fort in the biodiversity of the Iberian Peninsula, but they are also a world reference for Bolivia, Nicaragua, Venezuela, Equatorial Guinea, Morocco or the Sahara, among other enclaves. And it is also a pilgrimage point for experts around the world when studying certain species, especially Iberian, from the lynx to the wolf, through the imperial eagle, the squirrel or the bustard.
Carlos Urdiales, responsible for these facilities, explains as a starter that a scientific collection is a “archive of the diversity of the earth” that is also the material support for scientific descriptions. What does this mean? Well, for each species there is a copy that is the canon: it gathers the characteristics that are its own and is the reference guide for the researchers. And in addition, it has to be deposited precisely in a scientific collection.
In this way, they become “a public natural heritage of all humanity”, summarizes Urdiales, which establishes its origin in the old curiosities cabinets that became popular in the 18th century, in many occasions driven by the monarch on duty. The Spanish crown, for example, gave rise to the current museums of the Prado, Archaeological and Natural Sciences in Madrid. Over the years, the collections received a strong impulse from which Spain remained off the “unfortunate nineteenth century.”
José Antonio Valverde, the starting point
Doñana’s began in the mid -XX who is considered the father of the National Park, José Antonio Valverde, who “is aware of the importance” of an element of this type and, with her own personal collection as a base, begins to Collect material from other naturalists. For example, it incorporates copies of Fray Saturio González, monk of silos he knew, and that when the abbot of the monastery does not know what to do with his belongings. Valverde took advantage of his wedding trip to stop in Burgos and take everything that fed in the car, and shortly after a fire destroyed what was there.
The material is nourished above all of donations, seizures, zoos (especially Jerez) and even abuses, although clarifying that “this is a collection, not a cemetery.” “There are specimens of the most unsuspected sites because Valverde had contacts worldwide,” and thus ending rodents of the 20/30 of the then Russian city of Leningrad . There are also gorillas (more than 40), a considerable sample of cetaceans (the most important in Spain with around 800), an imposing variety of bats and even the last cheese of the Sahara.
The biological station, highlights Urdiales, custody holotypes of several species, which is the physical specimen that defines it and is the reference for the scientific community. That the holotype ends in one place or another depends a lot on the researcher who describes it, for example that of the Iberian lynx is in France and that of the Iberian Iberian Eagle, in Germany.
The grandfather of the machado
With a collection of vertebrates that supports the pulse to that of the Museum of Natural Sciences, in recent years he has incorporated invertebrates and has integrated for example an important collection of butterflies (10,000 nothing less) that arrived from the University of Córdoba. Not long ago, the herbarium began, which is specializing in the evolution of biodiversity in Doñana.
Right now it has 140,000 copies, although the calculation indicates that there is the equivalent of 25% of this figure still without cataloging. And although he was born in the mid -XX there are numerous samples of the XIX from collections, such as that of the San Isidoro Institute of the Hispanic capital, which Antonio Machado and Núñez launched, a whole humanist (anthropologist, geologist, doctor and zoologist) who was rector of the University of Seville and grandfather of the poets Antonio and Manuel Machado.
Carlos Urdiales estimates that half of the material is made up of specimens of the Iberian Peninsula, while the origin of the other half is very distributed: a third is from North and Equatorial Africa, another third of Central America and South America and the rest, of the rest of the world. “There are few countries in the land of which there is not something,” he says, with preparations that usually consist of study skin and bone material, normally the skull (“the most important”) and the partial skeleton. Amphibians and reptiles are whole preserved in alcohol.
THE IMPORTANCE OF A GROUND THE YEAR 2800
And what most attracts the attention of all this to the visitor? Well, “the most spectacular”, which defines as “the nobility”: lynx, imperial eagles, wolves (there are more than 700) or gorillas. Although schoolchildren also come out that they want to see Harry Potter’s owl and once someone said a real turkey … and it turns out that there was none. From the Jerez Zoo they provided the time.
There are complete mounted specimens, starting with a common rorcual of 19 meters placed vertically and occupies the five floors of the biological station building. There is also the “most significant world collection” of Monk seal, or one of the most important in Europe of Rayadas. There is a sprinkler tigress, a sperm whale, Cuban crocodiles, a glass fiberglass mold of one of the last sturgeons of the Guadalquivir, more than one hundred eggs of imperial eagle and up to 400 foxes. “We have many specimens of common species and that interests researchers because they have representative samples.”
Urdiales affects that it is not enough to have a copy without more, but requires a “dignified preparation” to show a “respect” and also recognize “the value of the species.” And it emphasizes that in the world there are many scientific collections, but that “all are complementary, this are not lead welds that are repeated” because, for now, there are specimens that “speak in space-time terms.” This, he concludes, is “a biodiversity archive available to present and especially future generations, because a 2025 m noze we do not know the importance it will have in the year 2800”.
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