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Home > Archives for Biodiversity Research and Teaching Collection

Vitality: The Art and Science of an Ornithology Collection

17Sep

This Thursday, September 19th, will be the opening reception for Vitality: The Art and Science of an Ornithology Collection. This collection is a collaboration between the SEAD Gallery & Bookshop and the Texas A&M University Biodiversity Research and Teaching Collections (BRTC). With the ever-growing collection, the BRTC will showcase a portion of their specimens in this all new, interactive exhibit.

 

For more information on the collection, you can visit the SEAD Gallery & Bookshop’s event page.

 

Vitality: The Art and Science of an Ornithology Collection

Just two more days until our opening reception for Vitality: The Art and Science of an Ornithology Collection. This collection is a collaboration between the SEAD Gallery & Bookshop and the Texas A&M University Biodiversity Research and Teaching Collections. Please join us this Thursday, September 19th, at 6:30 pm for hors d’oeuvres and refreshments. Special thanks to Sterling Auto Group, Texas A&M Wildlife and Fisheries Sciences, Texas A&M AgriLife Extension Service, George Bush Presidential Library and Museum, The Board of the Texas Ornithological Society, Trevor Lancon, and Mike Cook.

Posted by SEAD Gallery and Bookshop on Tuesday, September 17, 2019

 

To see more about what the Biodiversity Research and Teaching Collections (BRTC) entails, head over to the BRTC Facility’s page. For information on how to Give to the Wildlife and Fisheries Sciences Department to support our research and opportunities, visit our Giving page.

Biodiversity Research and Teaching Collections’ oVert project on display at Texas A&M

2Sep

Heather L. Prestridge, curator for the BRTC, explains one of the images. (Photo by Laura Muntean.)

COLLEGE STATION — The Biodiversity Research and Teaching Collection, or BTRC, maintained by the Texas A&M Department of Wildlife and Fisheries Sciences has launched a gallery of images created using CT scans from their collection of specimens, including a bigeye thresher shark, an alligator snapping turtle, a clingfish and three other images.

The gallery, on display from June 12 to Sept. 21, is hosted by the Reynolds Gallery at the Memorial Student Center at Texas A&M University, 275 Joe Routt Blvd., College Station.

The gallery exhibit, which is free and open to the public, is part of the “Open Vertebrate Exploration in 3D” project, or oVert. Texas A&M is one of 16 institutions involved in the multimillion-dollar project backed by the National Science Foundation, or NSF.

Using specialized scanners designed for human and veterinary medical uses, the BRTC along with the Texas A&M Institute for Preclinical Studiesand the Texas A&M College of Veterinary Medicine are working together to scan some of the largest specimens in the project.

Six examples of these high-quality digital scans are on display in the Reynolds Gallery, organized by Heather Prestridge, curator of the BRTC, and Mary Compton, curator of the Reynolds Gallery.

Bigeye thrasher shark ct scan

Alopias supercoliosus, or the bigeye thrasher, can be seen in the Reynolds Gallery at Texas A&M. (Photo courtesy of the BRTC.)

“Some of these animals are only preserved in a few collections around the world, which makes them difficult and sometimes impossible to study in detail,” Prestridge said. “With digital scans that can be shared electronically, scientists have access to thousands of unique animal species at their fingertips.”

“Each scan comes with its own story,” Prestridge said. “There is a skull of a fish that’s inside this eel that he ate, but we would have never known that if we didn’t CT scan it. So now we have colleagues at the University of Florida working on segmenting this piece out so we can identify the fish.”

The king snake eel, or Ophichthus rex, revealed a surprise within its own CT scan when another fish was found inside. (Photo by Laura Muntean.)

Each image is accompanied by a description and a scaled image to give viewers a visual depiction of the size of the specimen. The specimens range from a few inches to a few feet in length.

“Nothing that we do is standard,” Prestridge said. “Each is a different size. Each is a different shape. This makes our job challenging and forces innovation.”

Each image on display is brightly colored in different gradients that are strictly related to the density of the material and is used purely as an artistic application, she explained.

The goal of the project is to scan more than 20,000 unique animal species by 2021. The best specimens are identified, and then their digital images are uploaded to a free online database called MorphoSource, she explained.

“Half of our download requests are for ‘non-research’ use,” Prestridge said. “This helps collections like ours to engage non-traditional user groups, including K-12 education, which can use our data to 3D print specimens and artists who work in digital media.”

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The post Biodiversity Research and Teaching Collections’ oVert project on display at Texas A&M appeared first on AgriLife Today.

 

To see more about what the Biodiversity Research and Teaching Collections (BRTC) entails, head over to the BRTC Facility‘s page. For information on how to Give to the Wildlife and Fisheries Sciences Department to support our research and opportunities, visit our Giving page.

Graduate Lunchtime Seminar Series highlighting Biodiversity Research and Teaching Collections set for Aug. 30

30Aug

COLLEGE STATION — The Reynolds Gallery at the Texas A&M Memorial Student Center is hosting the first Department of Wildlife and Fisheries Sciences Graduate Lunchtime Seminar Series on Aug. 30 from noon to 1 p.m. within the Reynolds Gallery, 275 Joe Routt Blvd., College Station.

alligator snapping turtle on CT scanner

Holden Currie, Wildlife and Fisheries class of 2015 and Heather Prestridge, curator of the Biodiversity and Research Teaching Collections, prepare to scan an alligator snapping turtle. (Photo courtesy of the BRTC.)

The seminar, Open Vertebrate, oVert: Improving Access to Natural History Collections through 3D Scanning, is free and open to the public. It will feature the gallery installation of visualizations of specimens from the Biodiversity Research and Teaching Collections, BRTC, the natural history collections at Texas A&M University. It will feature Heather L. Prestridge, curator at the BRTC, as the speaker.

Data for these visualizations was captured as part of the National Science Foundation sponsored oVert: Open Vertebrate Exploration in 3D Thematic Collections Network. Texas A&M is one of 16 institutions involved in the multimillion-dollar project backed by the NSF.

The project is represented at Texas A&M University by Kevin Conway, Ph.D., associate professor for the Department of Wildlife and Fisheries Sciences and curator of fishes for the BRTC, Prestridge and Sarah Potvin, associate professor for the Texas A&M University Libraries.

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The post Graduate Lunchtime Seminar Series highlighting Biodiversity Research and Teaching Collections set for Aug. 30 appeared first on AgriLife Today.

Caylie Harris won second place in the Undergraduate Poster competition…

28Mar

Caylie Harris' Research Week Poster

Ms. Caylie Harris won second place in the Undergraduate Poster competition in the Agriculture and Life Sciences Category at the 2019 Student Research Week! Caylie is being advised by Heather Prestridge at the Biodiversity Research and Teaching Collections and her poster was about federally endangered ocelot specimens newly accessioned into the mammal collection.

Caylie Harris won second place in the Undergraduate Poster competition

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