The Beaty Biodiversity Museum is part of UBC’s Beaty Biodiversity Centre, which brings the University of British Columbia’s world-class biodiversity researchers and natural history collections together into an innovative building complex.
The Biodiversity Research Centre (BRC) is composed of more than 50 internationally renowned scientists, all dedicated to the study of biodiversity. Interdisciplinary working groups study the biological forces that produce and sustain biodiversity, as well as the forces that lead to extinction and the local and global consequences of its loss.
Biodiversity research aims to document the enormous diversity of life on Earth and to identify the factors that generate and maintain this diversity. Scientists at the BRC investigate the ecology, evolution, and conservation of biological diversity through research at all levels, from genes to ecosystems through to interactions with society. As the scope of global climate change, human-caused habitat alterations, and associated extinction rates rise, the need to understand and conserve biodiversity and the ecosystem functions that it sustains has never been more pressing.
For studies showing how the specimens in the Beaty Biodiversity Museum’s research collections have been used, please see our Articles & Papers page.