The World鈥檚 Top Natural History Museums Have a Male Bird Bias

A new study finds that only 40 percent of bird specimens are female, a skew in the biodiversity catalogue that limits ecological research.

Tucked out of sight, away from the showy exhibits at your nearest natural history museum, lie the institution鈥檚 real treasures: its collections. Stored inside drawers and cabinets are thousands or millions of individual specimens鈥攄ead, shelf-stable plants and animals gathered from the wild. For scientists, they are a window into past life on Earth, showing how species and their surroundings have changed over decades or centuries.

鈥淗ow the environment changes is going to be reflected in the things that live in that environment, and the only insight we have into that, through time, is in museum collections,鈥 says , the curator of birds at the Field Museum in Chicago, which holds 40 million artifacts and specimens.

But a new study, , finds that the female sex is underrepresented in bird collections from five of the world鈥檚 foremost natural history museums. This male bias must be addressed, curators say, so that current and future scientists can properly study and find solutions to leading challenges facing bird populations.

The news isn't a surprise to , assistant curator of ornithology at the Natural History Museums of Los Angeles County, who has had trouble finding female specimens of tanagers and hummingbirds, forcing her to adjust and sometimes limit her research. 鈥淭here鈥檚 so much biology we鈥檝e been missing because of male bias,鈥 says Shultz, who was not involved in the study. 鈥淚t鈥檚 great to see it documented in a rigorous framework.鈥

A group of researchers at the Natural History Museum in London compiled records from 1.3 million bird specimens collected between 1751 and 2018 from the American Museum of Natural History in New York, the Field Museum in Chicago, Mus茅um National d'Histoire Naturelle in Paris, Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History in Washington, D.C., and their own institution. Nearly half of those specimens weren鈥檛 labeled by sex. Of those that remained, 60 percent were male and 40 percent were female. That translated to over 143,000 more male birds than female birds in those five major museums.

The pattern holds across bird groups: In all six of the largest avian orders鈥攕ongbirds, hummingbirds/swifts, woodpeckers and relatives, parrots, shorebirds, and doves鈥攎useums had more male specimens than females. And for "type" specimens, which officially define a given species, the male bias is even more pronounced: Only 25 percent are female. That means that crucial elements of species鈥 biology and behavior鈥攊ncluding sex-specific behaviors, egg production, and often rearing young鈥攁re not captured in these biodiversity storehouses.

This collection bias can be partly explained by biology. In species where male and female birds differ physically, the male is often a colorful show-off, flashing brilliant feathers and sometimes performing absurdist choreography to attract a mate. He might perch out in the open, predators be damned, and sing extravagantly to claim territory.

鈥淚f you鈥檙e showy or bright, you鈥檙e that way for a reason: to get attention,鈥 Hackett, who was not involved in the new research, says. The male birds aren鈥檛 trying to lure scientists seeking museum specimens, but humans may be drawn to the same bright colors and performance that attract female birds. 鈥淚f the males with the brighter plumage are easier to find, you鈥檙e going to capture more males,鈥 she says.

Female birds are often trying to avoid attention of a different sort: from predators eager to snatch defenseless eggs or chicks from the nest. As a result, female coloring is often鈥but not always鈥攎uted or cryptic. They鈥檙e trying to hide, and as a result they hide from scientists, too.

However, curators say that an element of human nature could also have led to this bias. When many of these older collections were created centuries ago, researchers liked to best each other: They wanted to capture the most colorful or biggest trophy, and in birds, that often means the male. 鈥淚f we open up our case of birds-of-paradise, we often have more males than females because people want to collect them,鈥 Shultz says. What鈥檚 more, historically, some ornithologists have argued that females are a mere subset of a given species, she says, playing a supporting role to the male鈥檚 true expression鈥an outdated concept that's become less prominent, but not extinct, yet.

No matter the reason for the male collecting bias, the result is that natural history museums likely don鈥檛 describe the full scope of bird ecology, Shultz says. As a bird moves through its environment, behavioral differences鈥攆or instance in migration, diet, or habitat鈥攃an be captured in the composition of its feathers and tissues and later studied. 鈥淚f we don鈥檛 have female representatives of some of these species, that limits our ability to understand the female side of the ecology,鈥 she says.

Crucially, male bias impacts genomic studies of bird populations, the authors write, which are increasingly important for crafting conservation strategies to recover threatened species or identifying genetically-unique species that need protection. Female specimens are necessary in these studies because female birds carry an entire chromosome that鈥檚 not found in males.

鈥淲hen many of these specimens were collected, scientists didn鈥檛 know about the structure of DNA,鈥 Hackett says. 鈥淔emale birds are really important in a way that 20 or 50 years ago we wouldn鈥檛 have known.鈥 Similar stories are playing out in other fields of ornithology, notably in the increasing recognition and study of female birdsong, which was sidelined in the past. 

That鈥檚 why, curators say, it鈥檚 important to reduce the male bias of collections. Whenever Hackett goes out into the field, she鈥檚 mindful of gathering females and males. Modern methods make that easier. Even 100 years ago, crews of researchers shot birds by sight. This continues today, but increasingly museums receive salvage collections, which are donations of birds which died by other means, such as window strikes. These aren鈥檛 typically sex-biased, Hackett and Shultz say. Meanwhile, mist-netting, a common technique, indiscriminately catches all birds that fly into a net鈥攁lthough, they note, researchers often attract species by playing male bird calls, a strategy likely to selectively pull in territorial males.

It might take some extra effort, Hackett says, but it鈥檚 worth ensuring biological collections represent the full breadth of bird diversity. Who knows鈥攆uture technologies could unlock other secrets of bird specimens and inform conservation. 鈥淲hat else don鈥檛 we know?鈥 she says. 鈥淚 just know that, no matter what, the specimens are at the heart of whatever we鈥檒l be studying.鈥