the natural history museum - university of nevada,...

A T T H E U N I V E R S I T Y O F N E V A D A , R E N O

The Natural History Museum

Talk Overview

What do we do? Research, teaching, outreach

What do we have? Major collections

How are we supported? Grants, foundation support, volunteers, UNR college and

departmental support

How can we interact with a reserve?

1. What do we do?

We are a repository for scientific specimens Collections are world-wide, many focus on the Great Basin

~60,000 spp 1890-present

~4500 spp 1851-present

~1,175 spp 1882-present

1. What do we do? (cont.)

We support University teaching: Six courses primarily used the teaching lab and 17 courses

visited Multiple departments:

Biology, Natural Resources, Art, Woman in Science and Engineering Program, etc.

We support research projects: In 2015, twelve PIs have mentored both

undergraduate and graduate research using the collections

Six NSF-BIO funded projects use and contribute to the collections

1. What do we do? (cont.)

We train resource managers: Great Basin Institute, Nevada

Department of Wildlife, others

We conduct K-12 outreach: We’ve reached many students

through organized visits and lab activities

Students Reached – 2014: 1383, 2015: 1803

Recent consolidation, dramatic increase in use

We consolidated collections on-campus in 2013, and increase in use has been exponential

2. Herbarium Collections

Full-time curator skilled in Great Basin plant identification

Digitization in progress, with a total of over 72,000 records available through the Intermountain Herbarium Network

~10,ooo specimens photographed

Next: georeferencing! 4,200 spp, ~92,000 specimens 1851 – present

Example: our collections fill major US gaps

The distribution, by county, of online herbarium records in 2014, showing the distribution by percentile and density per km2. Note the very low number of specimens in Nevada and Western Utah,the center of the Great Basin floristic province. Reproduced from Tyler 2014

2. Herp and Fish Collections

NSF funded curation of most of the liquid fish collections

~7000 herp specimens moved onto campus more recently

Greater than 80% of specimens are databased

Collections were queried over 200 times by researchers through the VertNet portal

436 spp, ~7,000 specimens 1934 - Present

213 spp, ~22,000 specimens 1930 - Present

2. Bird and Mammal Collections

Contain some of the oldest specimens in Nevada with collections across every decade

Digitization through Arctos greater than 95% complete

328 spp 2,330 specimens 1882 - present

188 spp 3,540 specimens 1905 - present

2,270 eggs 80 nests

2. Insect Collections

Collection includes specimens from across the United States and some tropical locations

~70% digitized using the Symbiota Collections of Arthropods Network

Working on increasing our local collections

~60,000 spp, 358,000 specimens 1890 - present

2. Education Opportunities

Collections are used to enrich the experience of students taking courses

Museum devoted classroom with microscopes and high-tech visualization tools

Specialized plant identification courses

2. Research Opportunities

Changes over time and space

Digitization allows access to researchers across the world

Herbarium assistance in identifying Great Basin plants

Example Publications Using the Collections!

Patterns of evolutionary divergence in the bushy-tailed woodrat (Neotoma cinerea) across Western North America (Hornsby and Matocq 2014)

Annual plants change in size over a century of observations (Leger 2013)

Body size divergence between the reptiles of Nevada’s Anaho Island and the mainland around Pyramid Lake (Keehn et al. 2013)

Hybrid speciation and independent evolution in lineages of alpine butterflies (Nice et al. 2013)

Host conservatism, host shifts, and diversification across three trophic levels in two Neotropical forests (Rodriguez-Castaneda et al. 2012)

3. Funding and Support

Some UNR support (CABNR, COS) for part-time employees and daily operations

State and federal grant support for herbarium curatorial activities

NSF support for curation of liquid collections, digitization of insect collection, and outreach

In-house courses and training fees support undergraduate workers in the herbarium

Undergraduate volunteers and interns Primarily external support for curatorial

and outreach activities, from individual and group donations

4. How can we interact with a reserve?

Taxonomic support Repository for specimens Other ideas Broader impacts activities? A Reno face for the reserve? REU opportunities for students? Provide support for creating on-site collections, i.e. herbarium

of local plants?

Museum Collection Curators

Co-Directors Beth Leger, Ph.D. – ealeger@gmail.com Chris Feldman, Ph.D. – ophis@unr.edu

Invertebrates Lee Dyer, Ph.D. – ldyer@unr.edu

Vertebrates Chris Feldman, Ph.D. – ophis @ unr.edu

Plants Arnold (Jerry) Tiehm, M.S. – atiehm@unr.edu

Graduate Curatorial Assistants Mammals/Birds: Sarah Barga – sarahcatherinebarga@google.com Herps/Fish: Erica Ely - eely@nevada.unr.edu

Thank You!

College of Agriculture Biotechnology and Natural Resources

College of Science Natural Resources and Environmental Science

Department Biology Department Mary S. Winter Charles H. Stout Foundation National Science Foundation Nevada Department of Wildlife Many, many volunteers!

Questions?

http://www.naturalhistory.unr.edu