Events

January 2009- Division of Amphibians and Reptiles Curator Howard Snell describes a pink iguana in the Galapagos. In a paper published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA, Professor Snell is part of a team of researchers that describes a spectacular new iguana species from Isabela island in the Galapagos Islands off the coast of Ecuador.

Hear the NPR interview with Dr. Snell at https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=99211626

A link to the paper can be found at http://www.pnas.org/content/106/2/507

November 2008-Jean Luc Catron, David Lightfoot, Sandra Brantley and Tim Lowrey will be presenting "A Field Guide to the Bosque" at the New Mexico Museum of Natural History on Tuesday, November 18, 2008 at 7pm.

July 2008--Reaccreditiation of the Mammal Collection. The Division of Mammals underwent a formal reaccreditation review by the Systematic Collections Committee during the American Society of Mammalogists meeting in June 2007 and was fully reaccredited in July

February 2008—National Science Foundation collections improvement grant funded
A $ 259,285 grant (Curation, Databasing, and Integration of the Orphaned Illinois Mammal Collection) was funded. This will provide funding for new cases, drawers, trays and two years of student employment support to integrate the recently acquired University of Illinois Museum of Natural History (UIMNH) mammal collection (ca. 33,000 specimens). Curation, database development, and integration are now underway on this important new collection of primarily southwestern mammals collected from the 1940’s through 1980’s.

January 2008- Creation of Division of Parasitology at MSB. This new Division at MSB is already the third largest helminth collection in North America. A NSF supplemental grant (NSF0726625) was awarded to MSB to transfer the helminth collections of Robert Rausch and the Beringian Coevolution Project from the USDA National Parasite Collection in Beltsville. These specimens were accessioned into space in the wet collections and form the nucleus of this newly created Division.

September 2007--- Undergraduate Opportunities (UNO) training grant awarded ($1,015,000) was awarded to UNM as part of the National Science Foundations Undergraduate research mentoring Program (URM). PI’s Cook and Gannon and several other Curators and Faculty in the Department of Biology secured funding for undergraduate training in science at UNM. This 5 year NSF award will host 12 undergraduate students from underrepresented groups per year in various research projects in the Museum and the Biological Sciences at UNM.

June 2007--American Society of Mammalogists (ASM) Annual Meeting. MSB organized and successfully hosted the 87th meeting from 6-10 June. 580 participants attended. This was one of the largest meetings held recently. UNM has a long history of leadership in this professional society. A number of ASM Past-Presidents (e.g., Drs. Findley, Wilson, Brown), Honorary members (4) and current members of the Board of Directors (5) and Editorial Board (3) are populated by UNM faculty and alumni.

8 October 2006
The Center for Environmental Research, Informatics and Art (CERIA) celebrated the opening of our building. Demonstrations of research and creative projects were featured in and around the CERIA building on the main campus (where the old bookstore was housed) See the collage of photos from the event. The first photo of the ribbon cutting features (l-r) Christopher Mead, Dean College of Fine Arts; Reed Dasenbrock, Provost; Terry Yates, VP for Economic Developement and Research and Vera Norwood, Interim Chair College of Arts and Sciences. All photos are courtesy of Mike Bogan, USGS Curator Emeritus.

News

June 2007
The Museum of Southwestern Biology hosted the 2007 American Society of Mammalogists (ASM) June 6-10, 2007.

September 2006
Professor Don Duszynski, Director of the MSB, has been selected as the 2006 Distinguished Alumnus of the Department of Biology at Colorado State University. Don will receive this honor at an award ceremony later this year, when he will give a retrospective lecture about his career in science and research over the last 35 years.

In addition, Dr. Duszynski has been invited as one of 25 international scientists, to serve on a Sloan Foundation workshop To Resolve Microorganism Taxonomic and Cultural Collection Problems Arising from the New Barcoding Initiatives. The workshop will be held in Portland, Maine, November 6-7, 2006. DNA barcoding is a methodology for identifying species using a short DNA sequence. It is purported to be a reliable, inexpensive and easily accessible tool for both taxonomic specialists and non-specialists (e.g., government officials, professionals in health and agriculture). There are several issues and problems, however, that need to be addressed before barcoding can be instituted, especially for single-celled microorganisms (protists). Linking barcodes to accurately identified species represents a large hurdle that must be overcome. The Sloan Foundation workshop will address problems that arise as species DNA barcodes are generated by protists.

August 2006
The UNM Biology Department has concluded the search for two new tenure-track faculty positions; Christopher Witt will replace David Ligon as Curator of the MSB Bird Division and Kelly Miller will replace Manuel Molles as the Curator of Arthropods. Both David and Manuel retired in 2005 after long and distinguished careers in biology.

May 2006
The UNM Museum of Southwestern Biology and the USGS Arid Lands Field Station co-hosted the joint meeting of the Society for the Preservation of Natural History Collections and the Natural Science Collections Alliance, May 23-27, 2006. The meeting theme was "The Road to Productive Partnerships."

08 August 2005
This month's Geoworld Magazine,"The Business Monthly for the GIS Industry," includes a feature article on the Biogeomancer Project. Biogeomancer is an international consortium developing an online workbench, web services, and desktop applications that will provide georeferencing for collectors, curators and users of natural history specimens. The project is co-managed by John Wieczorek from the Museum of Vertebrate Zoology, Berkeley and MSB's Chris Frazier. MSB's Biogeomancer team includes Teri Neville, GIS coordinator for Natural Heritage New Mexico, and Tomas Giermakowski, collections manager for the Division of Amphibians and Reptiles.

02 August 2005
Today's Albuquerque Journal includes an article "World on Web: Database Holds Plants, Animals" with great pictures of the Herbarium collection manager, Jane Mygatt, and the Herbarium specimen imaging system. The article follows Yale graduate student Stephen Smith's usage of the INRAM Gateway to New Mexico Biodiversity to find honeysuckle specimens in the UNM Herbarium that he needs for his dissertation work.

17 May 2004
MSB Highlights, a posting of divisional and program developments is released.

© David Lightfoot