The University of Michigan Museum of Zoology lately acquired tens of hundreds of scientifically priceless reptile and amphibian specimens, together with roughly 30,000 snakes preserved in alcohol-filled glass jars.
The new acquisitions enhance the college’s assortment of reptiles and amphibians to roughly half one million specimens, together with some 70,000 snakes. With the latest additions, U-M now maintains the biggest analysis assortment of snakes wherever on the earth, based on museum curators.
More than 100 packing containers containing jarred snakes, lizards, salamanders, newts, frogs and turtles have been hauled to Ann Arbor final month from Oregon State University, which felt the U-M museum was particularly well-positioned to maximise the scientific potential of this beneficial useful resource, based on evolutionary biologist Dan Rabosky, a curator on the U-M Museum of Zoology, which is named the UMMZ.
The zoology collections, in addition to the college’s paleontology, anthropological archaeology, and herbarium collections, are housed at U-M’s Research Museums Center, a number of miles south of downtown Ann Arbor. At 153,375 sq. ft, it is likely one of the largest such services at any U.S. college and accommodates collections, laboratories, specimen information and libraries below one roof.
While the middle’s collections will not be open to most people, researchers from around the globe go to to review bodily specimens firsthand. Biologists use the UMMZ collections to deal with key evolutionary questions, akin to: How do new species type? How do reptiles and amphibians evolve? Why are there so many sorts of venomous snakes?
In addition, many hundreds of U-M undergraduates have gained beneficial hands-on analysis and classroom expertise by finding out organic range on the museum.
“The UMMZ is one of the only museums capable of supporting a collection of this size,” Rabosky mentioned of the Oregon State specimens. “It takes numerous sources to combine and preserve collections like this and to make the specimens and their knowledge available to the worldwide analysis neighborhood.
“In that sense, the UMMZ is more like a giant scientific instrument—such as a telescope or a particle accelerator—than the stereotypical storage room that people sometimes associate with museums. It’s an active, vibrant place where people are asking all sorts of big questions about life on Earth and how we are impacting it.”
The 45,000 or so specimens from Oregon State signify the lifetime work of two lately retired professors there, Stevan Arnold and Lynne Houck. Arnold acquired a doctorate from U-M in 1972 and relied on the UMMZ assortment for his dissertation work.
The overwhelming majority of the newly acquired specimens belong to 2 teams of snakes (garter snakes and water snakes) and two teams of salamanders (woodland salamanders and dusky salamanders). In addition to a whole lot of jars containing the specimens, the transferred materials contains about 30,000 frozen tissue samples.
“We have a great scientific partnership with the University of Michigan. Although Oregon State maintains and values its core reptile and amphibian collection, we were no longer able to maintain Steve and Lynne’s specialty collection,” mentioned Oregon State entomologist David Maddison, who helped coordinate the switch.
“After contacting multiple institutions, it quickly became clear that the University of Michigan’s Museum of Zoology was the only one that had the resources—space and staff—to absorb the collection. It made a lot of sense to transfer it to UMMZ, given their track record at making museum specimens and associated data available to other researchers. This will be a boost for biodiversity studies and for ecology more generally.”
The merging of the Arnold/Houck assortment into Michigan collections is of particular curiosity to U-M evolutionary biologist and behavioral ecologist Alison Davis Rabosky, who research animal coloration and mimicry in snakes to higher perceive the origin and evolution of vivid shade patterns throughout species.
“These are two powerhouse snake collections coming together to become something entirely new—a super-collection capable of doing things together that neither one could have done alone,” Davis Rabosky mentioned.
Davis Rabosky is an affiliate professor within the U-M Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology. Dan Rabosky can be a professor within the division.
In recent years, main digitization initiatives at museums worldwide have made specimens much more accessible as images and related knowledge are made available on-line. Even so, photos and databases can by no means totally change bodily specimens, based on Rabosky.
For instance, the 30,000 frozen tissue samples from Oregon State shall be used for superior genetic research. They have been transported to Michigan in two ultracold freezers contained in the supply truck, together with 115 packing containers crammed with jars of specimens. The truck additionally held 50 packing containers containing subject notebooks, lab notes, knowledge sheets and film movie of behavioral observations.
“I think that with the advances in molecular genetics, more sophisticated analyses of DNA from these specimens and their associated frozen tissue samples could be applied to understand evolutionary changes between generations and to understand how different populations are adapting to changing climates. This kind of research could never be done without having the actual specimens and their DNA,” mentioned Greg Schneider, analysis collections supervisor for the zoology museum.
For Schneider and a group of U-M college students who helped unpack and shelve the newly acquired specimens, the supply truck’s arrival was a momentous event, with every seemingly equivalent cardboard field crammed with singular scientific wonders.
Large water snakes coiled inside alcohol-filled jars. Female garter snakes with litters of newborns. Black, white and orange Kaiser mountain newts from Iran. Enigmatic Luschan’s salamanders from Turkey. “Hybrid” specimens that resulted from matings between completely different species, and which could assist researchers perceive the genes that usually maintain species separate.
“Many thousands of these specimens are from sets of related individuals—i.e., parents and offspring,” Rabosky mentioned. “This could be very, very uncommon for museum collections and is extremely highly effective for analysis as a result of it lets researchers ask questions on genetics that may in any other case not be potential.
“This is scientific information that is not replicated anywhere else on Earth, and we at the UMMZ are now the custodians of this portal to deep insights about biodiversity. It’s an amazing opportunity and responsibility for us.”
