Moray eel. Moray eels are legendary predators on coral reefs. Note the second set of jaws in the “throat”; these are the gill arches, which are present in all fish. Gill arches support the gills, the major respiratory organ of fish.

Lookdown. Because of its sloped head and the enlarged crest on its skull, the Lookdown appears to “look down” as it swims. These fish often swim in small schools.

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Alligator Pipefish. Pipefish may be thought of as seahorses unfurled. The numerous bony body rings are used to differentiate one species of pipefish from another.

Ox-eyed Oreo. The name Oreosoma (“mountain body”) refers to the cone-shaped bony structures on the underside of this larval specimen. Adults are more elongate, less oval, and covered with scales.

Dhiho’s Seahorse. Just over one inch long, this elegant fish is readily identified as a seahorse by its characteristic head. The body ends in a tail that can curl around and hold on to algae or coral. This species is found only in the waters around Japan.

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“Usually we see a species split into two because we find that one of them has a very different DNA than the other, without other indicators,” said Rob Fleischer, head of SCBI’s Center for Conservation and Evolutionary Genetics. “It’s very unusual to discover a new species of bird these days and especially gratifying when DNA can confirm our original hypothesis that the animal is unique. This bird is unique, both genetically and in appearance, and represents a novel, albeit very rare, species.”

Image left: Bryan’s shearwater (Photo by Reginald David)

Researchers have rarely discovered new species of birds since most of the world’s 9,000-plus species (including about 21 other species of shearwaters) were described before 1900. The majority of new species described since the mid-1900s have been discovered in remote tropical rain and cloud forests, primarily in South America and southeastern Asia. The Bryan’s shearwater is the first new species reported from the United States and Hawaiian Islands since the Po’ouli was described from the forests of Maui in 1974.

The Bryan’s shearwater is the smallest shearwater known to exist. It is black and white with a black or blue-gray bill and blue legs. Biologists found the species in a burrow among a colony of petrels during the Pacific Ocean Biological Survey Program in 1963. Peter Pyle, an ornithologist at the Institute for Bird Populations, recently examined the specimen and found that it was too small to be a little shearwater (P. assimilis) and that it had a distinct appearance.

According to Fleischer and Andreanna Welch, a former graduate student and Smithsonian predoctoral fellow at SCBI who worked on the genetic analysis, the Bryan’s shearwater differs genetically to a greater degree than found between most other species of its genus, and is distantly related to another similar-looking species, the Boyd’s shearwater (P. boydi). Based on this DNA evidence, researchers estimate that the Bryan’s shearwater separated from other species of shearwaters perhaps more than 2 million years ago. These findings have been published in a paper, A new species of Shearwater (Puffinus) recorded from Midway Atoll, Northwestern Hawaiian Islands, in the current issue of The Condor.

Researchers do not know where Bryan’s shearwaters breed. According to Pyle, shearwaters and other seabirds often visit nesting burrows on remote islands only at night, and researchers have not discovered the breeding locations of many populations. Individual seabirds from colonies also often “prospect” for new breeding locations, usually far from existing colonies. Bryan’s shearwater could conceivably breed anywhere in the Pacific Ocean basin or even farther afield.

Given that Bryan’s shearwaters have remained undiscovered until now, they could be very rare and possibly even extinct.

“If we can find where this species breeds, we may have a chance to protect it and keep it from going extinct,” Welch said. “Genetic analysis allows us to investigate whether an animal represents an entirely different species, and that knowledge is important for setting conservation priorities and preventing extinction.”

Bryan’s shearwater is named after Edwin Horace Bryan Jr., who was curator of collections at the B.P. Bishop Museum in Honolulu from 1919 until 1968.

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Image right: Oxalis simplicifolia growing on a cliff at Ua Huka, Marquesas Islands, shows distinctive simple leaves, flowers and fruits. (Photo by Steve Perlman)

New findings by researchers from the National Tropical Botanical Garden the (David H. Lorence) and Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History (Warren L. Wagner), in collaboration with French IRD and French Polynesian researchers, have brought to light 18 new species and one new variety of ferns and flowering plants from the rugged Marquesas Islands. Since 1988, 62 new species have been described in conjunction with the Vascular Flora of the Marquesas Islands and the Flore de la Polynésie française projects, representing a 20% increase in the known native flora. Ten precursor papers by the authors and collaborators describing the new species were published in issue the open access journal PhytoKeys.

Image left: Botanist Steve Perlman collects Oxalis simplicifolia on a cliff, Ua Huka, Marquesas Islands. (Photo by Jean-Yves Meyer)

According to senior project leader David Lorence, “Intensive field work has revealed that most of these new species are extremely rare and localized endemics, often confined to a single island. Many are known only from one or two localities harboring intact native vegetation that have so far escaped pressures from invasive plant species and feral animals. Consequently we assigned preliminary IUCN Red List ratings of Critically Endangered (13), Endangered (5), or Vulnerable (1) to these new species.” Over 6,000 herbarium specimens collected by field botanists were pressed, dried, and distributed to collaborating institutions in Tahiti, Hawaii, Washington DC, Paris, and elsewhere for study by botanical specialists. Ferns comprise an important element of the Marquesas flora, and 11 of the 18 new species are ferns. In addition, the botanists collected numerous new island records for native species and documented non-native, potentially weedy species that comprise about half of the islands’ flora.

As this project clearly shows, the biodiversity of many tropical islands is still poorly documented and explored. Field work and biological inventories of this type are essential to enhance our knowledge of insular biodiversity and provide critical information for conservation of these organisms and their habitats. However, staffing and funding for this type of work are scarce. Results of this project are available on an Internet-based resource hosted on the Smithsonian’s Department of Botany website, which provides access to a database with species descriptions, photos, distribution, literature, specimens lists, and other information: http://botany.si.edu/pacificislandbiodiversity/marquesasflora/index.htm.

The final goal of this project is publication of a comprehensive two-volume book covering the Vascular Flora of the Marquesas Islands, a goal which is nearing completion with the publication of these new species.–Source: National Tropical Botanical Garden

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This genetic evidence confirms previous suspicions, based on life history analysis, that tortoises west and east of the Colorado River are two separate species.

Image right: An Agassiz’s desert tortoise hides in a burrow; a radio transmitter is attached to its shell as part of a USGS study. (Photo by Steven Schwarzbach, USGS)

The newly recognized species has been named Morafka’s desert tortoise (Gopherus morafkai) and represents populations naturally found east and south of the Colorado River, from Arizona extending into Mexico.

The originally recognized species, the Agassiz’s desert tortoise (Gopherus agassizii) is listed as threatened under the federal Endangered Species Act. It represents populations naturally found west and north of the Colorado River in Utah, Nevada, northern Arizona and California.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS), which manages the recovery of threatened and endangered species, had already been treating tortoises on each side of the Colorado River as distinct populations The genetic evidence simply backs up previous observations, such as differences in life history and reproductive strategies.

Image left: A Morafka’s desert tortoise in Saguaro National Park, with radio transmitter attached to its shell as part of a USGS study. (Photo by Jeff Lovich, USGS)

“The two species have different habitat preferences,” says Kristin Berry, a United States Geological Survey biologist who has studied desert tortoise biology for more than 40 years and is a coauthor on the study. “Morafka’s tortoise prefers to hide and burrow under rock crevices on steep, rocky hillsides, while the Agassiz’s tortoise prefers to dig burrows in valleys.”

Roy Averill-Murray, the desert tortoise recovery coordinator for the Fish and Wildlife Service said, “The study’s finding that the Morafka’s desert tortoise is a new species confirms the Service’s decision to evaluate this population independently from the Agassiz’s desert tortoise, and will not change the status of either species under the Endangered Species Act or change existing recovery plans.”

Image left: This map shows the range of both the Morafka’s desert tortoise (Gopherus morafkai), gray area lower right, and the Agassiz’s desert tortoise (Gopherus agassizii), black area upper left. (Map courtesy USGS)

Distinguishing the two species required some historical detective work. Desert tortoises were first described in 1861 by Army physician, J.G. Cooper. But two of the original specimens were lost, possibly as a result of the San Francisco earthquake and fire of 1906. Fortunately, Cooper sent a third specimen to the Smithsonian. Carefully held in the collection of the Division of Reptiles at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History in Washington, D.C., DNA from this tortoise helped researchers in their analysis 150 years later.

The study is published in the journal ZooKeys. A detailed FAQ about the study on the Webpage of the USGS Western Ecological Center.–Source: United States Geological Survey

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Image right: After this adult anemone broadcast spawned, Smithsonian’s National Zoo animal keeper Mike Henley collected the eggs off the surface. Using coral settling techniques learned in the field, Henley is successfully growing anemones. (Photo by Mike Henley)

“We have many questions about how to care for these animals as they grow from larvae to adults,” said Mike Henley, an animal keeper at the Zoo’s Invertebrate Exhibit who applied the technique to the anemones after they had spawned. “The oceans are not an infinite resource and so anything that we can learn about the captive management of coral and anemones will go far in our ability to conserve them.”

The anemones—both of which are commonly called Tealia red anemones under the species of Urticina—spawned in late April and early May, just days apart. Hours after they spawned, Henley collected the eggs and sperm from the more than 2,000-gallon tank and put them together in smaller tanks to increase the chances of fertilization. After fertilization, the larvae settled and metamorphosed into a polyp. Henley put some of the developing larvae in a circular tank—called a kreisel—that automatically stirs the water to prevent the larvae from binding to one another, which would kill the animals. The kreisel is the same tank Henley and others use in the field in Puerto Rico to hold coral larvae. Other free-swimming larvae went into a regular tank with aeration and rocks to settle on. Now the Zoo has hundreds of thriving anemones behind the scenes, all smaller than the tip of a pencil.

Image left:  The result of National Zoo keeper Mike Henley’s work is hundreds of thriving anemones, all smaller than the tip of a pencil. The one shown here is no bigger than 1-2 mm. (Photo Mehgan Murphy)

“Sometimes we take the lessons we learn with animals in captivity and apply that to conserving them in the wild,” said Alan Peters, curator of the Zoo’s Invertebrate Exhibit. “But here we were able to apply what we’ve learned both in the field and from ex situ work and it is yielding some exciting results.”

While anemones and coral are both in the Anthozoa class of animals, they differ in a few notable ways. Anemones metamorphose into a single polyp, while coral will divide into a second polyp and a third and so on, to form a colony. In addition, anemones have a muscular foot they use to attach to rock, while stony corals make their own calcium carbonate rock that they live on. But both can sting and are carnivorous, feeding on crabs, shrimp, fish and zooplankton. More than 1,000 sea anemone species inhabit the world’s oceans at various depths, from the sandy seashore up to the surface. Visitors to the Zoo can see six different species of anemones, including cold and warm water anemones. Although anemones are not endangered, ocean habitats around the world are in decline as the result of pollution, runoff and sedimentation, climate change, acidification and poor fishing practices.

Henley will continue to observe the anemones to learn about their growth rate and the conditions that are necessary to rear these species in captivity, including the food, light and water temperature they require.

“In the past if the anemones spawned in the tank, it’d be a big headache,” said Henley. “You’d have to do frequent water changes because when the gametes—or reproductive cells—get too concentrated and deteriorate, it causes the water quality to crash. That’s the common experience among many of our zoo and aquarium colleagues. But this was different—so far it’s amounted to young anemones that we will continue to learn from for months, even years, to come.”

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Basket making by Botswana women has a long history and it continues to be a robust craft tradition.  During the last three decades it has become increasingly well known in the international craft market.

Etsha Weavers Group, a Botswana craft group made up of 24 skilled basketmakers, has played a pivotal role in bringing attention to Botswana basketry as a unique art form.

“This contemporary Botswana basket is an important addition to the Smithsonian’s collection,” says Mary Jo Arnoldi, curator, African ethnology, at the Natural History Museum. “This piece provides an updated visual timeline in the collection showcasing both the continuity and the evolution of basket making in Botswana.” As an integral part of the Botswana culture, baskets have been used for a variety of purposes. Closed baskets with lids, like the recently acquired piece, are used for storing grain and seed. Large, open bowl shaped baskets are used by the women for the transportation of goods and smaller, plate shaped baskets are used for winnowing grain after it has been processed.

Photo right: Mashe Mbombo of the Estha Weavers Group

Basket makers in Botswana use a method called coiling to create their modern baskets. The process of making a coil basket can take up to six weeks to complete. Basket makers use a thick bundle of palm fiber, grass or vine to begin the inner coil. The next step is to pierce a small hole into the coil and begin wrapping strips of palm around the core of the basket. This process is repeated until the basket reaches the desired size – designs are created by weaving strips of dyed palm into the basket pattern. Arnoldi notes that, “The National Museum of Natural History Anthropology collection had only five smaller plate shaped basketry trays from Botswana, all collected in rural villages prior to the 1960s. We certainly welcome the addition of this large and beautifully made storage basket to the collections.” –Jessica Porter

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Since its doors first opened in 1910, the National Museum of Natural History has inspired curiosity and learning about the natural world and our place in it. Building upon the strong foundation of our extensive collections, the staff of the museum have been at the forefront of essential scientific exploration and research, and groundbreaking public exhibition and education. This slideshow and the website (www.mnh.si.edu/onehundredyears/) is a living documentary of the Museum’s 100-year history.

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Donated to the Smithsonian by the Wellness Center of Providence, R.I., FluMist joins the ever-growing collection of vaccines in the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History’s Division of Medicine and Science.
“The Museum has a significant collection of vaccines covering about 120 years of development – from our earliest specimens of smallpox vaccines and diphtheria antitoxin of the late 19th century to the FluMist of the 21st century,” says Diane Wendt, associate curator in the Division of Medicine and Science at the museum. 

Photo: This image of the newly identified H1N1 influenza virus was taken in the Influenza Laboratory. of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

FluMist is not only the first intranasal administered influenza vaccine in the United States, it’s also the first live virus influenza vaccine approved in the United States. What does this mean? Basically, the flu vaccine most of us have received in the past via injection is a “killed” virus, one that cannot multiply but can still trigger an immune response to prevent future infection. FluMist works by exposing you to a small dose of a very weak form of the virus, which helps your body to develop immunity to the disease.

“FluMist represents a new development in the influenza vaccine,” Wendt explains. “It is a great addition to our collection of vaccines.” —Jessica Porter

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