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News
Karen Searcy will be participating in a symposium on "Natural Communities: From Classification to Conservation" on Saturday April 1 sponsored by the Massachusetts Natural Heritage and Endangered Species Program and the Manomet Center for Conservation Sciences. Her talk is titled "Natural Communities of the Mt. Holyoke Range". March 2006 Report from the Director, peg rileyDear Friends of the Natural History Collections, I am writing to report on the past years activities in the Massachusetts Natural History Collections (NHC). So many events and transitions, where to begin? A new director for the NHCLet me start by introducing myself as the new Director. I was informally invited to serve at the bequest of the former director, Dr. Willy Bemis (now at Cornell University) and several family members of an earlier director (Dr. David Klingener). I was trained by Dave during my undergraduate years at UMass Amherst and produced an honors thesis that focused on harbor seal morphology. I remained with Dave for a masters degree, during which time I studied the jaw mechanics of sea otters, river otters and martens, resulting in my very first publication (Riley, M. A. 1985. An analysis of masticatory form and function in three mustelids (Martes americana, Lutra canadensis, Enhydra lutris). Journal of Mammalogy 66: 519-528). Although I have strayed far afield in my more recent research endeavors, my love for museums, natural history collections and collections-based research and education has only increased over time. A new home for the NHCMy first act as Director was to secure a new home for the collections, thanks in large part to the efforts of the Biology Chair, Dr. Tom Zoeller. Until this past summer, the various collections were scattered throughout Morrill, often invisible to our students and faculty. The NHC now has a new home base, located on the first floor of Morrill. The main office is in Morrill 146, where you will find the Collections Manager, Kate Doyle, and the Collections Financial Administrator, Sally Klingener. Just across the hall, Morrill 153, you will now find the entire set of Biology Collections (save for the Herbarium (Morrill 401) and Plant Diversity Collections (Morrill 100)). Morrill 144 is currently being renovated to serve as the Collections Laboratory, which will house undergraduate and graduate students engaged in collections-based research. Morrill 147 is the Collections Prep and Storage Room. We anticipate acquiring two adjacent small offices as they become available to house visiting scholars, collections-based post-doctoral fellows and future Collections Directors. The NHC has taken charge of two collections-based teaching laboratories, Morrill 204 and 206, and an adjacent laboratory prep room, Morrill 202. The NHC will renovate the two laboratories to create inviting spaces to learn about organismal diversity with the addition of numerous mounted specimens, live animals and plants, and natural history artwork. If you have specimens or artwork that you would like to donate to this effort, please speak with the collections manager, Kate Doyle. We anticipate completing renovations of the prep room and one laboratory by fall 2006. The goal is to hold all collections-based course laboratories in these two rooms by the end of the 06/07 academic year. A new focus for the NHCOne highly significant change that has occurred in the past year involves a transition from research to teaching collections. This has involved down-sizing some collections and increasing the diversity held by others. The goal is to create the best possible teaching collection with the space and resources available. This transition certainly does not preclude curators and/or students engaging in collections-based research, however the primary focus of the curators in terms of specimen acquisition has shifted somewhat. One highly visible outcome of this new focus was the gift of a large portion of the fish skeletal collection to the Cornell Museum of Natural History. Although we hate to see any specimens go, the administration felt is was appropriate to transfer our research skeletal specimens to Cornell, after having created a fish diversity collection to remain for teaching purposes. A new web site for the NHCThe NHC web master, Alex Bannigan, is adding the finishing touches to a brand new NHC web site. She has created a site that will allow easy access to descriptions of our various collections and their curators, to specimen lists and descriptions, and to collections-based news stories. We hope to launch the site in mid March. The live plant diversity collectionsThe NHC is pleased to announce that it has joined forces with the Live Plant Diversity Collection overseen by Dr. Tobias Baskin and managed by Teddi Bloniarz. Dr. Baskin was just recently appointed as an NHC curator. We look forward to working together as we create novel mechanisms to enhance the undergraduate exposure to organismal diversity. The growing body of NHC curatorsThe NHC curators include the following:
The growing body of NHC researchersThe NHC is proud of the excellent research efforts of its students, curators and staff. The following staff and students are actively engaged in collections-based research. Staff : Ms. Kate Doyle (mammal collection), Ms Roberta Lombardi (plant collection), Ms. Teddi Bloniarz (live plant collection) Graduate students : Ms. Natasha Korobov (fish collection), Eric Dewar (mammal collection), Matt Gruwell (insect collection), Sharlena Santana (mammal collection), Undergraduate students : Ms. Amber Lefebvre (herp collection), Mr. David Fletcher (herp collection), Paul Chatelain (mammal collection), Tanya Karst (mammal collection), Marie Emma Jecrois (fish collection), Pilar Arguelles (fish collection) - Peg Riley |
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