The Backbone

The Smithsonian goes to Oman

Collections Management Workshop for the Natural History Museum of Oman

February 23-27, 2013, Muscat, Oman

Hanan Al Nabhani showing off a bulbul specimens she prepared

The Natural History Museum of Oman  opened at its current location on 20 December 1985, not quite 30 years ago.  The young museum consists of a scientific collection and exhibit spaces with examples of indigenous plants, insects, mammals and birds.  The current staff of four Museum Specialists has been taking outstanding care of the scientific collections with the means they have.  But, with a new Natural History Museum under construction, they needed assistance in updating their practices for the modern space.

 

 Carol Butler, Assistant Director for Collections NMNH, Christina Gebhard,  Museum Specialist, Division of Birds NMNH; and John Simmons, President of Museologica and expert in fluid preserved collections, traveled to Oman February 20-28^th  to assist the Oman Natural History Museum with collections assessment and care initiatives.  This was the third consultation trip the Smithsonian has taken to Oman.

Rapidly Assessing Marine Biodiversity by Blender: First Steps in Testing Homogenate Analysis

 

Juvenile filefish collected from a plankton net in Carrie Bow Cay, Belize. Photo by Carole Baldwin.

Smithsonian researcher Carole Baldwin and LAB Director Lee Weigt, with the support of Cristina Castillo, Maggie Halloran, and Diane Pitassy, devoted part of their December 2012 trip to Carrie Bow Cay, Belize, to the development of ground-truthing protocols for a new marine biodiversity research tool: rapid genetic assessment of biodiversity from homogenized plankton samples. Sorting and identifying individual specimens in a given plankton sample for marine biodiversity assessments is time-consuming. The team asked: can homogenized--or “blenderized”-- plankton samples that comprise a mixture of larval fishes and invertebrates be resolved rapidly into distinct species using new genetic assessment tools such as Next Generation DNA sequencing? Can they do the same with environmental DNA from water samples? From their efforts to genetically barcode the ichthyological fauna of the Caribbean over the past decade, Carole and Lee have a large baseline genetic dataset that can be used to evaluate the success rate of homogenate analysis.

 

Smithsonian and California Academy of Sciences Researchers Investigate the Impact of Invasive Lionfish on Marine Fauna in Belize

Lionfish hovering among mangrove roots at Twin Cays, Belize. Photo by Diane Pitassy.

Carole Baldwin, Lee Weigt, Diane Pitassy, Cristina Castillo, and Maggie Halloran-Fagan, Smithsonian Institution teamed with Luiz Rocha, California Academy of Sciences, in Belize in mid–December 2012 to survey the shallow inner reefs near Carrie Bow Cay for two marine fish species: the threatened endemic Halichoeres socialis, the Social Wrasse, and the predatory invasive Pterois volitans, the native Indo-Pacific Red Lionfish. Social Wrasse populations occupy ecologically sensitive shallow coral reefs and mangroves and are known only from the Pelican Cays, a group of small mangrove islands and sand bores south of Carrie Bow Cay. Coastal development has negatively impacted these ecosystems. Baldwin and Rocha had previously observed abundant coral and other reef life at one of the Pelican Cays where, instead, the December research team found a slope smothered with sediment and little or no life. For the Social Wrasse, the threat of habitat loss is compounded by the recent introduction of the invasive lionfish to coastal Belizean habitats. Lionfish were first seen in Belize in 2008 and today are common along the Barrier Reef. They are a massive threat to the native fauna because nothing is known to eat them in large quantities. Larger predatory Caribbean fish have not yet developed a taste for the lionfish which protect themselves with venomous spines. And lionfish eat seemingly any bite-size fish or invertebrate that wanders within their range.

Integrated Pest Management and Herp Collecting in Oklahoma

Sam Noble Oklahoma Museum of Natural History

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. 

Deep-Reef Fish Collections: One fish, two fish, new fish, new fish

Curasub collecting specimens. Photo by Barry Brown

In August 2012, Carole Baldwin (Division of Fishes) and her team continued their exploration of Curacao’s deep reefs with the Curasub. The five-person submersible, based in Curacao in the Southern Caribbean, allows researchers to collect reef species to a depth of 1,000 ft (ca. 305 m.).  In the second year of fieldwork for the Deep Reef Observation Project (DROP), Carole, Ross Robertson (Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute, Panama), and Lee Weigt, Amy Driskell and Cristina Castillo (LAB) collected, photographed, sampled tissues and preserved fish specimens from deep-reef depths in a small, ca. 50-hectare area adjacent to the Curacao Sea Aquarium.