Hi Mariko,

As a frozen tissue repository, we have been much concerned about the
meaning of "Voucher specimen". Traditionally, the voucher of an animal was
its entire skeleton (19th century).
Nowadays, however, if you want a sample for genetic analysis of the
Siberian tiger, pointless to say that you cannot shoot (mercifully!!) the
animal to get the sample. So you either dart it and take a blood sample, or
use a camera trap, which takes a picture of the animal and at the same time
a hair sample. Now your "vouchers" for that animal will be what you get:
the blood or the hair. This is the reason why we built the Ambrose Monell
Cryo Collection at AMNH, so that all genetic "voucher" be stored in a
centralized repository, where they can serve as reference for future
molecular work.
All this is explained on our Website at: http://research.amnh.org/amcc/
The voucher issue is in: http://research.amnh.org/amcc/objective.html

I hope this will help somewhat.

Angelique


Angelique Corthals
Collection Manager
The Ambrose Monell Collection for Molecular and Microbial Research
American Museum of Natural History
Central Park West at 79th Street
New York, NY 10024

URL: http://research.amnh.org/amcc/staff1.html

Tel: (212) 496 3389
Fax: (212) 496 3380

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