MSB - Welcome

The 21^st Century will be the Century of Biology—a period when our discipline, as a field of inquiry, will be changed forever. Our biological knowledge and our understanding of that knowledge are growing exponentially but, in response, biology seems to splinter into more and narrower specialty areas at a time when greater unification of seemingly disparate sub-disciplines (e.g., molecular biology, ecology, systematics, evolutionary biology, others) is of paramount importance. Among the most pressing problems of the 21^st Century is the preservation of our planet’s biological diversity. The MSB at the University of New Mexico (UNM) is uniquely poised to address such global issues from a variety of perspectives!

Over the last 30 years, the Department of Biology and UNM had the foresight to commit critical resources both to organismal, systematic and environmental research and to the protection, preservation and growth of the collections of the flora and faunal in which our faculty Curators had particular regional, national and international research interests. They did this by adding $8.1 million of University and State funds to $1.3 million in extramural funding as an investment in the renovation/construction of the CERIA (Center for Environmental Research, Informatics and Art) building which now provides 38,500 ft² of new space to house all of MSB’s Curators, Collections Managers and specimens in state-of-the-art wet, dry and frozen tissue spaces (25,900 ft²), UNM’s Sevilleta Long Term Ecological Research (LTER) offices (1,600 ft²), NSF’s LTER Global Network Office (3,400 ft²) along with the Department of Media Arts and the Art Technology Center. The latter two may seem like strange bedfellows. However, consider that within modern universities, media crosses all disciplines and their close proximity to MSB creates a creative environment to meld modern visual technologies with the sciences to help meet the research and educational challenges posed by state and national needs. Biology and UNM also understood the need for human resources and have committed state-funded Collection Managers and faculty replacements to our major collection divisions.

This investment has resulted in world-class collections in, and intimate collaboration between, most of the divisions of the MSB: 1) Division of Amphibians and Reptiles: >72,000 specimens, mostly from the Southwestern United States, but with substantial numbers from other states, Mexico, the Caribbean, and the Galapagos Islands. Our herpetological collections represent the largest collection of New Mexican specimens and the second largest collection of specimens from the “Four Corner” states in the World; 2) Division of Arthropods: our newest division, with >81,000 preserved specimens, many from the southwestern U.S. and northern Mexico with substantial concentrations of Coleoptera, Hymenoptera, Lepidoptera, Diptera, Hemiptera and Siphonoptera. We are the repository and processing center for two NSF-LTER programs, Jornada and Sevilleta sites, both in New Mexico; 3) Division of Birds: >24,000 specimens which makes us the largest single collection in the American Southwest and puts us on par with all the collections in Texas, combined. We are also the only bird collection in the Southwest with a full-time Collection Manager; 4) Division of Fishes: >50,000 catalogued lots (~3 million specimens) making it the largest university-based fish collection in the southwestern US. The collection emphasizes long-term monitoring, ecology, and life-history of fishes inhabiting imperiled aquatic ecosystems of the desert Southwest; 5) Division of Genomic Resources: a cryogenic archive of tissue samples from vertebrates, invertebrates, parasites and DNA from other museum divisions and outside collections, it contains >500,000 samples (largest wild mammal tissue collection on Earth) and is worldwide in scope; 6) The UNM Herbarium: ca. 105,000 accessioned specimens of mainly vascular plants collected in New Mexico and surrounding southwestern states; 7) Division of Mammals: contains >140,000 specimens, mostly from western North America, Central and South America, but with substantial holding from throughout the world, including holdings from the USGS Biological Survey Collection. This is the 6th largest mammal collection in the Western Hemisphere; in addition, tissues of most of our specimens are archived separately in our Genomic Resources collection; 8) United States Geological Survey (USGS) Biological Survey Collection: includes 45,000 vertebrate specimens from the USGS, many of which are from federal lands in the western United States. This collection is unique and valuable because it dates from the late 1920s and early 1930s, when it was part of the USGS Biological Survey. Currently > 90% of the collection postdates 1970; 9) Natural Heritage New Mexico: maintains databases on occurrences of native New Mexican plants and animals of conservation concern; largest database contains >23,500 observation records. Information is used by policy makers, natural resource managers, and government and business leaders to support conservation and land management decisions that conserve our state’s diversity for all New Mexicans.

Well-maintained and accessible, MSB’s collections are spatially and temporally extensive and intensive and, thus, are among the finest resources currently available to environmental scientists and educators who are interested in tackling tough questions facing society. Clearly, our current and future partnerships fostered in the new CERIA space are poised to contribute significantly both to understanding the complexity of biological diversity and ecosystem function on a regional, if not global, scale, and to address critical biological problems (e.g., biodiversity, public health, habitat degradation, pollution, etc.) facing our ever increasing human population in the 21st Century. Once again, we welcome you to the Museum of Southwestern Biology!!