The Division of Birds would like to welcome Museum
Specialist, Jacob Saucier, to the Department of Vertebrate Zoology. Jacob
comes to us from the University of Wyoming where he is finishing his Master’s
degree at the Berry Biodiversity Conservation Center, working on the
systematics and phylogeography of Thryothorus
wrens.
Jacob is originally from Louisiana and attended Louisiana State
University (LSU) as an undergraduate where he developed a scientific interest
in birds after taking an Ornithology course
from renowned ornithologist James Van Remsen at the LSU Museum of Natural
Science. Jacob quickly became skilled in both field and museum ornithology
and participated in foreign and local collecting expeditions. Immediately
after graduation, Jacob was hired by LSU to database National Park Service
specimens collected in Jean Lafitte National Park as part of a broader effort
to document NPS specimens in museums.
Edmison enjoys a northern California sunset in the coastal town of Gualala.
Please join us in welcoming Nicole Edmison to the Division
of Mammals. Nicole comes to us from the American
Museum of Natural History, where for the past two years she oversaw the
complete renovation and re-curation of their marsupial collection. Originally
from Alaska, Nicole spent many years in northern California where she gained
experience in the bird and mammal collections of the California Academy of
Sciences, in addition to volunteering in their molecular lab.
Nicole earned her degree from that great purveyor of
naturalists—Humboldt State University—and she followed up with field studies of
Tule elk and the shorebirds of San Francisco Bay. Nicole loves the outdoors and
has expressed an intense desire to get out and see more of it…anywhere, and so we have invited her to
join members of the Division of Mammals on a planned field trip to Myanmar
early this year. Who knows, maybe her expertise repairing snowmobiles (or snow
machines as the Alaskans call them) will come in handy out there.
The Collection Program Technician Team. From left: Amanda Lawrence, Julie Hoskin, Jennifer Strotman, Erin Bilyeu, Laura Tancredi, Barbara Dasheiff. Photo: Diane Pitassy
The six
members of Collections Program Technician team (CPT) will be lending their much
appreciated assistance to various projects within the Department of Vertebrate
Zoology over the next four years. The team mission is to accelerate
digitization efforts across the museum and improve the physical care of
collections both at NHB and MSC. Paul Kimberly of the ADS Office will be
supervising the team. To give Department staff a little background on our new
museum colleagues, each team member has provided a short professional bio.
Please welcome them to our community!
Ai Nonaka will be assisting with DNA sampling in the
Feather Lab during the busy fall migration period. Ai is taking some time away from Fishes to
learn the techniques and methods of collecting ‘bird snarge’ for DNA barcoding. Ai is supported through FAA funding.
Esther Langan, new staff member to the Division of Mammals
Please join us in welcoming Esther Langan to the Division of Mammals. She was offered the job of Museum Specialist a few weeks after her interview and accepted immediately. Esther comes to us from our very own National Zoo where she had been a biotechnician in the pathology lab since 2006. A graduate of the University of Florida at Gainesville, where she earned Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees in Wildlife Ecology and Conservation, she also has six years of experience working for the Florida Museum of Natural History.
Earlier this summer
osteo-preparator John Ososky hosted two colleagues from the National Zoological
Museum in Copenhagen, Denmark (ZMUC), Abdi Hadayat, and Kristian
Gregersen. The National Zoological
Museum is currently constructing a new whale hall and sought the expertise of
Department of Vertebrate Zoology staff John Ososky and Charley Potter in marine
mammal specimen preparation and collections management practices.
After it opened twelve years ago, the Sam Noble Oklahoma
Museum of Natural History (SNOMNH) asked Jeremy Jacobs (Division of Amphibians
and Reptiles) to provide an Integrated Pest Management (IPM) assessment of the
new building. This year, administrators
at Sam Noble decided it was time to follow up on that assessment and asked
Jeremy once again to assess their IPM program and determine what, if anything,
needed tweaking.
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.
Tom Strang, an
internationally recognized expert on Integrated Pest Management (IPM), recently
visited NMNH at the request of the museum’s Collections Program to consult on
our IPM guidelines and current practices.
