Duke Lemur Center BioBank Collection

Latest version published by Duke Lemur Center on Jul 2, 2025 Duke Lemur Center

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Description

The BioBank is a jointly-curated ancillary collection of tissues derived from the established living stocks collection (i.e., the animals comprising the historic and current DLC primate breeding colony). It is a vouchered primary data source for biological research that is available to the scientific community. The current BioBank consists of >25K frozen and fixed samples from over 1,400 individuals representing 37 species, most of which are strepsirrhines. The DLC BioBank includes many types of specimens (e.g., cadavers, blood, organ tissue, sperm plugs, urine, and feces) available to researchers at a modest fee. These samples are associated with animal records, many of them digital.  Therefore, for example, data derived from these samples can be linked to life history.  Specimens are banked opportunistically from the living colony during routine physical exams or other veterinary procedures. Tissues are also collected from animals at necropsy. They are preserved in a variety of ways suitable for DNA, RNA, histological, and anatomical analysis.

The DLC is actively working to digitize and mobilize the data contained with the BioBank to GBIF and other data aggregators. Given the scope of this task, no time frame has been set for the completion of this process. If you are a qualified researcher interested in obtaining biological samples, please contact the Research Department at dlcbiosamples@duke.edu to discuss sample availability and to request the appropriate approval forms.

Versions

The table below shows only published versions of the resource that are publicly accessible.

Rights

Researchers should respect the following rights statement:

The publisher and rights holder of this work is Duke Lemur Center. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (CC-BY-NC 4.0) License.

GBIF Registration

This resource has been registered with GBIF, and assigned the following GBIF UUID: 13348187-3edc-490b-85e6-9245d6e7bdfb.  Duke Lemur Center publishes this resource, and is itself registered in GBIF as a data publisher endorsed by VertNet.

Keywords

Metadata

Contacts

Erin Ehmke
  • Originator
  • Point Of Contact
  • Director of Research
Duke Lemur Center
Christine Wall
  • Metadata Provider
  • Research Professor Emerita of Evolutionary Anthropology
Duke Lemur Center
Kate Neely
  • Metadata Provider
Duke Lemur Center Museum of Natural History
Amanda Mazza
  • Custodian Steward
Duke Lemur Center
27705
David Bloom
  • Programmer

Geographic Coverage

All biobank samples are located at The Duke Lemur Center in Durham, NC.

Bounding Coordinates South West [35.966, -78.972], North East [35.999, -78.933]

Taxonomic Coverage

No Description available

Order Primates
Family Cheirogaleidae, Galagidae, Indriidae, Lemuridae, Tarsiidae
Genus Carlito, Cephalopachus, Cheirogaleus, Daubentonia, Eulemur, Galago, Hapalemur, Lemur, Loris, Microcebus, Mirza, Nycticebus, Otolemur, Perodicticus, Propithecus, Varecia

Collection Data

Collection Name Duke Lemur Center BioBank
Specimen preservation methods Deep frozen,  Formalin,  Other

Bibliographic Citations

  1. Yapuncich GS. 2017. Body mass prediction from dental and postcranial measurements in primates and their nearest relatives. Unpublished PhD Dissertation, Duke University, Durham, NC.
  2. Yapuncich GS, Kemp AD, Griffith DM, Gladman JT, Ehmke EE, Boyer DM. 2019. A digital collection of rare and endangered lemurs and other primates from the Duke Lemur Center. PloS one, 14(11), p.e0219411.

Additional Metadata

Please adhere to the VertNet Norms when using these data - https://vertnet.org/resources/norms.html

Purpose

Small aliquots of blood and organ tissues are fresh frozen and stored at -80⁰C. We have the capacity to flash freeze tissues in liquid nitrogen, fix tissues in formalin, and preserve tissues in RNALater. Most of the cadaveric samples are fresh frozen and stored at -20⁰C. A portion of the historical collection of cadaveric samples is fixed and stored in formalin.

If you are interested in samples that the DLC does not currently bank, requests can be made to collect specific sample types (e.g., odor samples from scent glands). We can also collect samples according to a specific methodology as they become available (e.g., fresh samples at necropsy).

After submitting a tissue request form, projects requiring small numbers of more widely available material are filled by the DLC Research Department directly. Projects requiring rare or large numbers of samples must be reviewed and approved by the DLC Research Committee.

CT scans and renderings of DLC BioBank specimens are available on Morphosource (Yapuncich, 2017; Yapuncich et al., 2019). This work was supported by a National Science Foundation award to Douglas Boyer and Gabriel Yapuncich at Duke University (NSF-BCS-DDIG 1540421). To date, 1,599 objects from N=157 frozen or fixed whole and partial cadavers (28% of the BioBank cadaver inventory) are open access on MorphoSource. The BioBank specimens were CT scanned at the Duke University Shared Materials Instrumentation Facility (SMIF) using a high-resolution scanner. All BioBank specimens are associated with life history, pedigree, health, colony management, and research data maintained in DLC databases and available to users.

Citations:

  • Yapuncich GS. 2017. Body mass prediction from dental and postcranial measurements in primates and their nearest relatives. Unpublished PhD Dissertation, Duke University, Durham, NC.
  • Yapuncich GS, Kemp AD, Griffith DM, Gladman JT, Ehmke EE, Boyer DM. 2019. A digital collection of rare and endangered lemurs and other primates from the Duke Lemur Center. PloS one, 14(11), p.e0219411. 
Alternative Identifiers 13348187-3edc-490b-85e6-9245d6e7bdfb
https://ipt.vertnet.org/resource?r=dlc_biobank