HALF of the natural specimens in the world's museums could have been given the wrong names, according to a team of Oxford University scientists.

They said this was because the number of specimens around the world was increasing too quickly for research to keep up, because there were so many museums and because there wasn't enough "time or research devoted to writing monographs". 

It has emerged through a joint study with the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh, which looked at thousands of museum specimens across the globe.

 

In some cases it had happened because different samples of the same plant had been named separately by various museum experts, the researchers said. 

Zoë Goodwin, the first author of the paper, added: "It’s a bit like separating identical twins at birth." 

But the discovery has been called a "worrying problem". The figure of 50 per cent of speciments being wrongly-named is also said to be a "conservative estimate".

Dr Robert Scotland, of Oxford University's plant sciences department, added: "Without accurate names on specimens, the records held in collections around the world would make no sense, as they don’t correspond to the reality outside."

He said that as more databases of specimen names are digitised and placed online, the large number of incorrect names could begin to cause problems. 

His team has suggested that other methods, such as digitised specimens and DNA sequencing could help to avoid confusion.