Using natural history collections to understand past pollution
Two Eastern Meadowlarks from the Greater Chicago area, collected/salvaged 104 years apart. The specimen on the left (from 1907) is coated in atmospheric black carbon, highlighting a time in our recent past when coal smoke engulfed industrial cities in the US. photo credit: Carl Fuldner and Shane DuBay
We have a number of current projects that use natural history collections to better understand what past environments were once like and how they’ve changed (and are changing!) through time and across geographic space. We use time series of specimens to reconstruct pollution landscapes to understand the impacts of pollutants on public health, the environment/climate, and wildlife. This work is highly collaborative and interdisciplinary by necessity, spanning the natural and social sciences to ask questions about environmental history, policy, and justice. Some of these projects look at: (1) exposure risk in humans and the cross-generational impacts of exposure, (2) the movement of contaminants through the environment and across food webs, and (3) the impacts of pollution on the ecology and evolution of the animals themselves.
The initial project that set us down this path:
DuBay, S. G., & C. C. Fuldner. 2017. Bird specimens track 135 years of atmospheric black carbon and environmental policy. Proc Natl Acad Sci USA 114(43): 11321-11326
A recent perspective piece highlighting the scope of this work:
DuBay, S., B. C. Weeks, P. E. Davis-Kean, C. Fuldner, N. C. Harris, S. Hughes, B. O'Brien, M. Perkins, C. Weyant. 2025. Measuring historical pollution: natural history collections as tools for public health and environmental justice research. Proc Natl Acad Sci USA 122(24)
A justice-centered framework for environmental health that links in natural history specimens through their capacity to track environmental change. The outer pieces of the puzzle represent key features of a justice-centered framework of environmental health. The questions at the center of the puzzle represent possible research questions that embed and prioritize the justice-centered themes into each research area. The numbered boxes elaborate on points of connection between Policy, Health, and Environmental Pollution. Figure created by Nyeema Harris and Shane DuBay, based on collaboration and discussions with Pamela Davis-Kean, Carl Fuldner, Sara Hughes, Bruce O’brien, Marie Perkins, Brian Weeks, Cheryl Weyant.
Ecology and evolution of animals across environmental gradients
A red panda at the top of a fir tree at our study site in Sichuan, China. photo credit: Dylan Meyer
Much of this work looks at the impacts of elevational and seasonal gradients on animals in mountain systems (in the tropical Andes and temperate mountains of Asia). We have broad interest in questions that integrate animal behavior, physiology, functional genomics, and life history. Some of these projects look at: (1) physiological flexibility/plasticity, (2) phenology and behavioral responses to seasonality and environmental change, and (3) within- and between-species variation in behavior, physiology, and life history across environmental gradients.
Examples of this research include:
DuBay, S. G., Y. Wu, G.R. Scott, Y. Qu, Q. Liu, J. Smith, C. Xin, A. Hart Reeve, C. Juncheng, D. Meyer, J. Wang, J. Johnson, Z. Cheviron, F. Lei, & J. Bates. 2020. Life history predicts flight muscle phenotype and function in birds. Journal of Animal Ecology 89(5): 1262-1276.
Zhu, Z., Y. Guan, A. Signore, C. Natarajan, S. G. DuBay, Y. Cheng, N. Han, G. Song, Y. Qu, H. Moriyama, F. Hoffmann, A. Fago, F. M. Lei & J. F. Storz. 2018. Divergent and parallel routes of biochemical adaptation in high-altitude passerine birds from the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau. Proc Natl Acad Sci USA 115(8): 1865-1870