Smithsonian Science » natural history

Slide Show: Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History is 100!

John Barrat — Tue, 22 Jun 2010 17:24:14 +0000

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.

Net survey: For quarter century, scientists have been counting creatures traveling Chesapeake Bay tributary

John Barrat — Thu, 06 May 2010 12:58:53 +0000

For fish, crabs and other creatures living in the Chesapeake Bay, the many creeks, rivers or subestuaries that feed the Chesapeake are enticing avenues to explore for food and refuge. These tributaries also provide important nursery and spawning habitat for many of the Bay’s aquatic residents. More than 25 years ago, researchers at the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center’s Fish and Invertebrate Ecology Lab began taking weekley surveys of the species that make their way in and out of Muddy Creek. This waterway flows through the center’s grounds in Edgewater, Md., and feeds into the Rhode River, which then feeds into the Chesapeake Bay.

View Muddy Creek and the Rhode River in a larger map

To survey the animals swimming up and down Muddy Creek, researchers use a fish weir—an expanse of nets, gates and boardwalks—that temporarily blocks aquatic traffic. Once a week, the researchers close the weir, set out the nets and identify and count all the species that get trapped. They began collecting data in 1983.

This type of fine-scale surveying, done on a weekly basis, is rare. It’s even more unique to have such long-term data. Many ecological studies are funded for just a few years at a time. These short time frames make it difficult for scientists to observe changes and patterns in species populations and composition.

In honor of the 2010 U.S. Census, staff at the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center have created this slide show of a recent spring survey. The salinity on this April day was fairly low and nearly a dozen golden shiners (a freshwater minnow) were caught along with several estuarine-resident and a few diadromous (fish that migrate between fresh and saltwater) species. Among the highlights: a sizeable snapping turtle, many white perch in spawning condition, juvenile American eels and a parasite.

Human activity and environmental conditions can affect which species are swimming in Muddy Creek. The water is brackish and salinity levels change seasonally and from year to year. During winter and early spring, when freshwater flow is usually the highest, researchers will generally catch more freshwater species like bluespotted and banded sunfish–-two protected species in Maryland. During periods of high salinity, researchers can catch many species indicative of the higher saline lower Bay such as red drum, spotted sea trout and Spanish mackerel. –Tina Tennessen

Leafcutter ants—first in agiculture and antibiotics

John Barrat — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 13:37:48 +0000

Females shut down male-male sperm competition in leafcutter ants

NEW ACQUISITION: Remains of William Taylor White (1837-1852) donated to Smithsonian with his coffin and clothing

John Barrat — Wed, 17 Feb 2010 19:09:51 +0000

The Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History recently acquired the remains, clothing and coffin of William Taylor White, a 15-year-old boy who was buried in Washington, D.C. in 1852. His coffin was unearthed in Washington’s Columbia Heights neighborhood in April 2005 during a construction project at an apartment building.

Image right: Anthropologists at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History clean and measure the body of William White after his coffin was opened. (Photo by Chip Clark)

White, who was a student at Columbian College from Accomack County, Va., died of pneumonia and complications from a mitral heart defect. When his coffin was unearthed, his identity was a deep mystery. Only through the diligent work of a multi-disciplinary team of Smithsonian staff, student interns and external specialists was White’s identity finally established. After a number of blind leads the team was able to track down White’s living relatives through historical records. They then used DNA analysis to confirm that the designated relatives were indeed related to White.

White’s relatives erected a headstone for him at a family cemetery on Virginia’s Eastern Shore and donated his remains, clothing and coffin to the Natural History Museum’s Department of Anthropology.

“The results of the multidisciplinary and collaborative research that led to the identification of William T. White is a testament in the interaction of the Smithsonian departments and the abilities of the experts involved,” says David Hunt, collections manager of the Physical Anthropology Division at the Natural History Museum.

Future studies of White’s coffin, clothing and well-preserved remains will further support DNA research by museum staff, as well as research on cast iron coffins and Civil War-era clothing.

“The addition of this accession to the Natural History Museum’s Anthropology Department fills a void for pre-Civil War iron coffin types and the remains of a documented known age and sex sub-adult skeleton,” Hunt says. “This acquisition is a ground-breaking addition to the Smithsonian collection and will further promote Smithsonian research.” —Jessica Porter & John Barrat

Julia Child prepares “Primordial Soup” at the Smithsonian

John Barrat — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 18:56:42 +0000

Smithsonian scientist discovers two new bat species hiding in museum collections for more than 150 years

John Barrat — Wed, 29 Jul 2009 14:15:17 +0000

While studying bats recently at the Academy of Natural Sciences in Philadelphia, Smithsonian mammalogist Kristofer Helgen discovered a new species of flying fox bat from Samoa in the Academy’s collections that had been preserved in alcohol since 1856.

That discovery inspired him to study early Samoan collections in other museums more closely, leading Helgen to discover a second new species of flying fox bat in the collections of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History in Washington, D.C. This specimen had been collected in Samoa even earlier than the first, between 1839 and 1841, and had been mislabeled as a different but similar species.

Photo: Kristofer Helgen with specimens of flying fox bats in the mammal collections of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History.

Both species of these newly discovered bats were very large, with wingspans of approximately two and three feet, respectively, and are now believed to be extinct.

The first specimen was collected on the Samoan island of Upolu in 1856 and had gone virtually unnoticed in the Academy of Natural Science’s collections since that time, says Helgen, a curator at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History. Helgen had traveled to Philadelphia specifically to study other kinds of mammals, but it was the bats in the Academy’s collection that grabbed his attention.

“I found this bat in my first hour at the Academy,” he says. Its small body and teeth immediately drew the attention of Helgen, who is an expert on flying fox bats. Drawing on features of the specimen’s skull, teeth and other body parts, Helgen, and his colleagues, Smithsonian mammalogist Don Wilson and museum specialist Lauren Helgen, determined the long-preserved specimen was a species unknown to science. They gave it a new scientific name, Pteropus allenorum.

During the meticulous study of P. allenorum, the scientific team compared its morphology to that of dozens of other flying fox bat specimens in natural history collections around the world—including London, Paris, Berlin, and the United States. It was at this time that Kristofer Helgen discovered a second new Samoan bat species, represented by two specimens in the collections of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History.

“The distinctions that set this second new species of Samoan bat apart were more subtle than the first,” Helgen says. “Basically all of the teeth of this specimen were larger, particularly the canine teeth; the jaw was much more robust, the skull larger and the muscles involved in chewing bigger.”

Photo: The skull of a flying fox bat from the Smithsonian’s mammal collections. (Photos by John Barrat)

All flying fox bats are herbivores, Helgen says, and the larger jaw and teeth of this bat indicate that it fed upon hard nuts or really thick skinned fruit. Helgen and his colleagues gave this second new species the scientific name Pteropus coxi; it is the largest kind of bat known from the Polynesian region.

Both new bat species were described in a recent article in American Museum Novitates, a scholarly journal from the American Museum of Natural History in New York. No other specimens of these species are known.

Because they are capable of flight, bats were the only mammals to naturally colonize many of the more remote islands in the southwest Pacific, Kristofer Helgen says. The European discovery and arrival of new influences to Pacific islands in the 1700s and 1800s accelerated the extinction of many native vertebrates, such as birds, lizards and bats, causing many species to go extinct soon after their discovery.

“In forests bats serve a critical role as seed dispersers and plant pollinators,” Helgen says. “It is interesting to consider how the forests of Samoa may have changed with the extinction of these two bats. It is unlikely that the two species of flying fox bats we know still live in Samoa are dispersing the seeds and pollinating the flowers of all of the plant species that these two extinct bats once did.” —John Barrat

Inside the National Museum of Natural History: Research

admin — Tue, 09 Jun 2009 14:36:54 +0000

Fossils Show Prehistoric Global Warming

John Barrat — Fri, 22 May 2009 12:52:32 +0000

The Past as Prologue
For those who think that global warming is a 21st-century phenomenon, Scott Wing, a scientist at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History, has news about the past.

Wing headed an international team of scientists whose discovery of plant fossils in the Bighorn Basin of northwestern Wyoming helps document the consequences of a sudden global warming, called the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum (PETM), 55 million years ago.

Experts believe the PETM, which was caused by a massive release of carbon into the atmosphere, may be an analogue for what is happening today as humans burn increasing amounts of fossil fuel and release large amounts of carbon dioxide.

Plant Movement Signals Global Warming
For nearly 15 years, Wing and his team dug through sediments deposited during uplift of the Rocky Mountains, looking for fossils of the right age and condition. Their discoveries proved that warming caused major shifts in the distribution of plants, allowing southern-dwelling trees and shrubs, related to poinsettia, sumac, and paw-paw, to move some 1,000 miles north in less than 10,000 years. These subtropical invaders flourished for about 100,000 years in what we now know as Wyoming. As carbon dioxide levels dropped and temperatures cooled again, plants related to birches and bald cypress came to dominate the vegetation.

The study and interpretation of this fossil record helps other scientists project future changes in plant life that may result from global warming induced by human activity.