Freshwater puffer fish, Colomesus asellus, collected in Guyana. Photo by Whit Bronaugh.
It is not every day that social media comes
to the rescue of ichthyologists. In early 2011, that is just what happened to a
Smithsonian (NMNH)-sponsored team of researchers, led by Brian Sidlauskas of
Oregon State University, who were faced with the daunting task of identifying
over 5,000 specimens collected during the first survey of the fish diversity in
the
Cuyuni River of
Guyana. To obtain an export permit, the government of
Guyana required that all specimens be identified-- a tall order in a week’s
time for a small team without access to the necessary
literature. Faced with this overwhelming timeline, Brian and his
team posted images of the specimens on Facebook and sent out a plea for help to
an international network of colleagues with expertise in the South American
fish fauna.
This action resulted in a resounding success for the research team
with nearly all species identified in short order, and they got their export permit
in time.
Facebook was so
impressed by this scientific use of its platform that they recently produced a
short video documenting the sequence of events in their “Stories: People Using
Facebook in Extraordinary Ways” series.
Thanks
to this innovative use of social media, thousands of specimens that the team
collected are now vouchered in the National Fish Collection and are available
to taxonomists for research.
