AT HOME WITH VERTEBRATE ZOOLOGY Our scientists never stopped working.
O
ur Collections & Research Center is normally abuzz with activity as our scientists facilitate visiting scholars’ research and work with millions of specimens and artifacts. Stay-athome measures abruptly changed that, but our scientists never stopped working.
Research Associate Chris Thacker, Ph.D., misses research trips to museums (lovingly chronicled on her Instagram account @thackfish). Still, lockdown encouraged her to learn new methods to illuminate her specialty: the goby family tree. “It’s now possible to sequence whole genomes from museum specimens,” Dr. Thacker reports. “I’ve been trying new ways to analyze huge amounts of data. There are lots of amazing tools and it takes time to get familiar with them, so lockdown has been helpful for that.” Her recent publications use DNA analysis to confirm relationships between gobies and their sister groups, and trace speciation in New Zealand stream gobies.
For Curator of Vertebrate Zoology Paul Collins, M.A., the changes allowed him to focus on his Channel Islands bird book. “I’ve been compiling and analyzing data on birds of the California Channel Islands for over 40 years,” reflects Collins. “I’m attempting to complete this book so I can finally retire.” It’s shaping up to be a truly impressive lifetime project, with accounts of hundreds of species found on eight islands. These descriptions draw on over 70,000 historical records of bird sightings and 11,000 records of specimens since 1843, as well as papers and reports. Collins’s extensive research also tracks changes in birds using the islands as breeding sites, from the grazing era beginning in the mid-1800s, through the present. Top: Dr. Thacker investigates fish in her home office. Photo by Daniel Geiger
Read more about Collins’s Channel Islands bird research in “Bone by Bone,” SBnature Journal 2019, vol.5, no.1, and “Museum Mysteries: The Disembodied Albatross,” May 8, 2018 sbnature.org/blog.
8
Bottom: A new species studied by Thacker. Photo by Daniel Geiger
