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Home > Archives for BRTC

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.

Texas A&M team discovers three new bird species in Africa

7Nov

Writer: Steve Byrns, 325-653-4576, s-byrns@tamu.edu

Contact: Dr. Gary Voelker,  979-845-5288, gvoelker@tamu.edu

COLLEGE STATION – A Texas A&M University team has discovered three never before documented bird species, and there could well be more, the team’s leader said.

Dr. Gary Voelker, professor and curator of birds in the department of wildlife and fisheries sciences at Texas A&M University, College Station, headed the recent discovery of a trio of similar African birds living in close proximity, but that are different species which share no common genes.

Voelker was lead author on an article published recently in the scientific journal Systematics and Biodiversity discussing that discovery.

Dr. Gary Voelker shows museum specimens of newly documented bird species.  (Texas A&M AgriLife photo by Kathleen Phillips)   

Dr. Gary Voelker shows museum specimens of newly documented bird species.  (Texas A&M AgriLife photo by Kathleen Phillips)

“The discovery of these three new species is a good example of the amount of potentially hidden diversity living in Afrotropical forests,” Voelker said. “Our evidence runs directly counter to the belief of earlier research that said Afrotropical forests are static places where little evolutionary diversification has occurred.

“The areas were referred to as ‘museums’ of diversity, meaning they believed because many of the birds look similar across their ranges, then they probably were the same species. That’s a point we are finding not to be true.”

The point of most interest, Voelker said, is that two of the three birds, which all look pretty much alike at first glance, live in close proximity to one another in an area that lacks significant geographic barriers typically associated with the forming of new species. Despite this, the birds don’t share genetic makeup and their appearance is indeed somewhat distinct when closely analyzed.

Voelker described the three new species as forest robins in the genus Stiphrornis; two from West Africa and one from the Congo Basin.

“Each of the three represents a distinct lineage based on our genetic analysis,” he said. “The three are further distinguished from already documented birds in the genus by clear differences in appearance such as wing and tail length and subtle differences in their plumage; one species has a distinctive song as well.”

Voelker said because many of the birds within the species look a lot alike, there’s hasn’t been much research done historically to find if they are in fact, different species. This lack of research also means there is much less well-preserved DNA available for genetic analysis and those specimens that are available are rather old.

However, his team’s recent collecting work in Africa has enabled them to add to the limited genetic material that several other museums have, which in turn, has allowed them to address the species diversification question.

“This overall lack of collecting bird specimens in Afrotropical lowland forests is likely inhibiting the discovery of any number of new species, though several apart from the three we studied have been described in recent years,” he said. “This suggests that a lack of sampling in the region, rather than a lack of obvious variation in the birds, is a key contributor to fully documenting avian biodiversity in lowland forests.”

Through genetic analyses and careful assessment of variation in plumage and appearance that is facilitated by museum specimens, the team was able to determine the three lineages tested represented new species.

They are named Stiphrornis dahomeyensis or the Dahomey Forest Robin found in Benin and the central region of Ghana, the Stiphrornis inexpectatus or Ghana Forest Robin collected from Brong-Ahafo and Central Regions of Ghana, and the Stiphrornis rudderi or Rudder’s Forest Robin discovered along the Congo River near Kisangani in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

Voelker, who named all three species, said Rudder’s Forest Robin was named for U.S. Army Major General Earl Rudder, who served as Texas A&M University’s 16th president and third president of the Texas A&M University System.

“I felt naming this special bird for Major General Rudder was a great way to acknowledge the role of Texas A&M University in supporting its faculty and student research,” he said.

When asked how this study benefits the public, Voelker said:

“It’s important to document that there is variation in a group like Stiphrornis, and others that tend to lack obvious variation in a natural setting,” he said. “Doing so gives conservation managers more data to reference when seeking to define important areas of concern. This may ensure such areas are defined to save the highest possible amount of biodiversity, which helps to sustain all life forms.”

An abstract of the journal article, “Three new species of Stiphrornis (Aves: Muscicapidae) from the Afro-tropics, with a molecular phylogenetic assessment of the genus,” is available along with a list of co-authors at http://bit.ly/2dPkbvm . View museum specimens of two of the birds at http://bit.ly/2eKbs21

Scientists search for rare snake in East Texas longleaf pine forests

4Aug

By Kathy Wythe

Scientists search for rare snake in East Texas longleaf pine forests

Photo courtesy of Dr. Wade Ryberg.

While many people try to avoid snakes, a group of researchers are doing everything they can to find snakes, specifically the rare Louisiana pine snake.

The nonvenomous, 6-foot-long snake lives in gopher burrows, coming out only to go from one burrow to another or to mate. Its only habitat is the longleaf pine savannahs in eastern Texas and western Louisiana. But today, that habitat is almost gone, said Dr. Toby Hibbitts, a researcher at the Texas A&M Institute of Renewable Natural Resources (IRNR) and curator of amphibians and reptiles at the Biodiversity Research and Teaching Collections at Texas A&M.

Hibbitts is working with Dr. Wade Ryberg, another IRNR research scientist, and colleagues from the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) Forest Service on the project.

“With the loss of habitat, populations are crashing in Texas and Louisiana,” Hibbitts said.

The snake’s numbers have never been that abundant, Hibbitts said. In fact, the snake was undiscovered until the 1920s.

“Most of the longleaf pine forest was cut beginning around the turn of the century, so the snake’s habitat was heavily affected before we even knew it existed,” he said. “Until the 1950s, fewer than 20 specimens were known.”

Hibbitts said after searching for and collecting the elusive snake over the last 20 years, researchers have only identified 250 specimens in Texas and Louisiana. Since 2006, just six Louisiana pine snakes have been found in Texas, with the last one found in 2008.

“So it has always been rare or at least really hard to find,” he said.

Because of its rarity, the snake has been under consideration for listing under the Endangered Species Act (ESA) by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) for years. The federal agency must make a decision on the listing by 2017.

With funding from the Texas Comptroller of Public Accounts, Hibbitts, Ryberg and scientists from the forest service are studying the snake’s population, distribution and habitat on private land in Texas.

“The comptroller’s office wants to have the best information possible for the FWS to make a listing decision, so that is why it is funding this current research project,” Ryberg said.

The team designed a new model using information from IRNR’s Texas Land Trends database to identify potential habitat for the snake. In the past, Hibbitts said, models were based on soils because the snake prefers specific sandy soils. Their research model added older pine forests that haven’t been harvested recently as a variable.

“We looked at a series of aerial photos of a pine stand, and if it had ever been cut over the last 30 years, we excluded it as habitat,” he said. “We set up a map with blocks of forest that were older than 35 years, and that is what we considered potential habitat.”

They also narrowed the potential habitat by selecting larger continuous forested areas.

Once these potential habitat areas were determined, they began the second step of the project: determining the snake’s population on the private lands.

Beginning in March, the team set out 26 snake arrays on the identified areas within the private forests. The arrays consist of drift fences that funnel the snakes into certain areas and camera traps that take photos every 30 seconds for about 14 hours a day, producing about 30,000 images per month from each camera. The camera traps will stay in place until October.

If the camera captures an image of a snake, the researchers will go back to the site with a box trap to try to capture the snake, Hibbitts said.

If any snakes are captured, the researchers, with approval from the landowner, hope to give the snakes to one of several zoos that run a captive breeding program for the species.

Ryberg said zoos in Memphis, New Orleans, Lufkin and Fort Worth are among the zoos that operate the captive breeding program for the Louisiana pine snake. There are currently about 100 Louisiana pine snakes in zoos.

Every snake that has been found in Texas since 2006 has been captured and brought into one of the zoos involved in the captive breeding program, Hibbitts said. For four years, at one site, the captive breeding program has released about 40 juvenile pine snakes to reestablish the population and to look at efficacy of reintroduction.

“However, there are currently only three females in captivity in Texas, at the Ellen Trout Zoo in Lufkin,” Ryberg said.

The researchers have made recommendations for establishing a captive breeding and release program in Texas for Louisiana pine snakes.

Hibbitts said their recommendation is that the Texas snakes will need to be bred with Louisiana snakes to get a large enough population of captive snakes from Texas stock to start a reintroduction program in Texas habitats.

One question the project aims to answer is, if no snakes are found on these lands, does Texas even have any more Louisiana pine snakes?

“The answer is there probably are some snakes in USDA Forest Service property and there are places they could be reintroduced that are being maintained for longleaf pine forest and being managed for good habitat,” Hibbitts said.

Once the team completes its research on private lands in East Texas, it can estimate the amount of occupied habitat, Hibbitts said.

“Then, if the snake is listed under the ESA, landowners of private lands in Texas considered to be in unoccupied habitat will not be required by ESA regulations to modify any management practices for their land.”

Originally appeared: http://twri.tamu.edu/publications/conservation-matters/2016/july/scientists-search-for-rare-snake-in-east-texas-longleaf-pine-forests/

TWRI and the Texas A&M Institute of Renewable Natural Resources are working together to foster and communicate research and educational outreach programs focused on water and natural resources science and management issues in Texas and beyond.

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