The use of herbaria for science and conservation is enabling greatly enhanced scopes and scales of discovery, exploration and protection of biodiversity. The availability of digital, open-access herbarium data is, perhaps counter-intuitively, expanding the use of physical collections by researchers who use digital collections to find specimens and then sample physical collections for multiomics investigations, including genomics, transcriptomics, metabolomics, proteomics and microbiomics. These investigations are leading to new scientific insights and supporting the development of conservation actions, but they come with a substantial cost: the partial or complete destruction of often irreplaceable specimens, which constitute a global heritage that should be permanently safeguarded for future reference. Here we provide a set of recommended best practices for the sustainable, equitable and ethical sampling of herbarium specimens. Our recommendations are intended for two complementary and partially overlapping audiences—users and stewards—who together build, use and protect herbarium collections.

将植物标本馆用于科学和保护，大大扩大了生物多样性的发现、探索和保护的范围和规模。数字化、开放获取的植物标本馆数据的可用性或许与直觉相反，扩大了研究人员对物理馆藏的使用，他们使用数字馆藏来寻找标本，然后对物理馆藏进行采样以进行多组学研究，包括基因组学、转录组学、代谢组学、蛋白质组学和微生物组学。这些调查带来了新的科学见解并支持保护行动的发展，但它们也带来了巨大的成本：通常不可替代的标本被部分或完全破坏，而这些标本构成了应永久保护以供将来参考的全球遗产。在这里，我们提供了一套建议的最佳实践，以实现植物标本馆标本的可持续、公平和道德采样。我们的建议针对两个互补且部分重叠的受众——用户和管理员——他们共同构建、使用和保护植物标本馆藏品。