The Backbone

Austral Biogeography Workshop held in Sydney, Australia, December 2012

 

Some participants in the Austral Biogeography Workshop, University of New South Wales (UNSW). Left to right: David Cantrill, National Herbarium of Victoria; Lynne Parenti, NMNH/ VZ/FIshes; Gonzalo Giribet, Harvard University; Visotheary Ung, Université de Paris; Andrés Moreira-Muñoz, Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile; Tony Gill, University of Sydney; Alan Kwan, UNSW; Shawn Laffan, UNSW; Michael Elias, UNSW; Malte Ebach, UNSW; and Dan Murphy, National Herbarium of Victoria.

An Austral Biogeography Workshop was convened at the University of New South Wales (UNSW), Sydney, Australia, 11 through 13 December 2012. The workshop was organized by faculty in the UNSW School of Biological, Earth& Environmental Sciences, in particular Malte Ebach and Gerry Cassis.  Eighteen participants were invited to address a series of questions and issues on the distribution of plants and animals in the southern end of the world.  The opening day focused on Australian Bioregionalisation and Geospatial Methodologies, and was followed by two days of presentations on Topics in Austral Biogeography.  Lynne Parenti, VZ Division of Fishes, gave a talk entitled “Discovering Areas of Endemism in the Indo-Australian Archipelago.”  Following the workshop, Lynne visited colleagues at the Australian Museum. 

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. 

World Congress of Herpetology (with Ichthyologists!)

The World Congress of Herpetology invited the world's herpetologists, as well as ichthyologists meeting with the American Society of Ichthyologists and Herpetologists and the American Elasmobranch Society, to convene at the University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada, from 8 through 14 August, 2012.  The Department of Vertebrate Zoology was well-represented by the divisions of Amphibians and Reptiles (Kevin de Queiroz, Roy McDiarmid, Dan Moen and Jeremy Jacobs) and Fishes (Bruce Collette, Dave Johnson, Ai Nonaka, Lynne Parenti, Dave Smith and Inci Bowman).

Squirrels of the World book is launched

 

Dr. Richard Thorington, Jr. (seated), James Whatton and Paula Bohaska

During a recent Mammals Division weekly coffee hour, Richard Thorington, Jr. (with assistant Paula Bohaska) and co-author Jim Whatton (Division of Birds) celebrated the August, 2012 publication by Johns Hopkins University Press of Squirrels of the World, the first modern, comprehensive examination of all 285 species of the family Sciuridae worldwide.  Six years in the making, the book provides a detailed look at each species of ground squirrel, tree squirrel, flying squirrel, marmot, prairie dog, and chipmunk through a species account that describes distinguishing characteristics, reviews the ecology and natural history, details conservation status and threats, and lists the currently recognized subspecies for each of the 285 species.  The striking tome includes 285 colorful distribution maps, skull images for each genus, and photographs of 230 species, providing many visually stunning glimpses of rarely seen squirrels.