Project Lab 

Record Breaking! A rare bird becomes a part of our collection

Wednesday, 05/01/13

If someone were to ask you if you had heard of a bird called a Booby, you might instantly think of the Blue-footed Booby (Sula nebouxii). They breed on the Galapagos Islands and are named for their feet that are an unnatural-seeming shade of blue. Blue-footed Boobies have one of the most charming mating dances I’ve ever seen – they’re no birds-of-paradise in the dancing department, but still flashy in their own way (go look up some videos online – you won’t be disappointed.)

Large seabirds that are often found in tropical waters, Boobies are a spectacular group of birds. Like pelicans, they dive into the water from a great height to pursue fish, and have air sacs under their facial skin to help cushion the impact when they hit the water. There are six species in the genus Sula: the Masked Booby (Sula dactylatra), Nazca Booby (Sula granti), Brown Booby (Sula leucogaster), Blue-footed Booby (Sula nebouxii), Red-footed Booby (Sula sula), and Peruvian Booby (Sula variegata). We don’t usually get a chance to see them up here in Northern California, but occasionally one will be sighted somewhere along the California coast.

Recently, the marine mammal Curatorial Assistant from our department, Sue Pemberton, was called out to Bodega Bay to respond to a California Sea Lion stranding. This is a typical call for Sue to get, as she takes measurements and samples from dead marine mammals that wash up on the beach. Sue noticed that there was something else washed up nearby: a seabird (pretty typical, again, to find on the beach). When she got close, she realized that it looked like a Booby, which was a shock to her as they’re not common in California. After bringing it back to CAS, it was identified as a Brown Booby. Not only was this a rare species for us it get, it turned out to be the first Booby record ever in Sonoma County – no species of Booby had ever been seen there. What a find!

I didn’t think it would be salvageable as a study skin, as it had been partially scavenged by other animals. I was determined, however, to give it a shot. Such a rare specimen deserved to be preserved in a way that researchers could look at its feathers, as opposed to just its bones. I quickly found out that it was skinnable and that the holes scavenged by other animals could easily be sewn up. I also decided to detach one wing and prepare a “spread-wing” so that researchers could see all of the flight feathers. After getting a good bath to remove all of the sand, it ended up looking great.

This is one of the things that I love about my job: getting to do the hands-on work to prepare unique specimens for the research collection. Even though I’ve seen Brown Boobies when traveling in Central America and Mexico, it’s still exciting to see one up close and I never thought that I would get the chance to prepare one. This specimen will be an important addition to our collection for many years to come!

Laura Wilkinson

Curatorial Assistant

Ornithology & Mammalogy

From the Stacks 

Diorama-rama!

Tuesday, 04/30/13

During our ongoing photo collection survey, we came across an image (by Moulin Studios) of a scale model version of the lion diorama that still stands in African Hall. Since the model is dated 1929 and African Hall didn’t open until five years later, it’s a rare glimpse into the early planning stages of the exhibit. Scale models were used to sketch out ideas for large dioramas before building the real thing.

The final diorama turned out significantly different than the original model: the lions are facing the opposite direction, and a second female lion was added. Every aspect of the diorama was undertaken by Frank Tose (then Head of Exhibits), including the taxidermy, installation, and background mural.

The lion diorama was unchanged from 1934 until the closure of the Academy’s original buildings in 2004. Since the murals in each diorama were painted directly onto the walls of African Hall, there was no way to save them when the building was demolished. Instead, they were painstakingly documented, color-matched, and re-created in the new building.

The lions themselves were sent to a taxidermist for cleaning and repair, since 70 years on exhibit had taken its toll on them. The original foregound was preserved and re-created, although the sunset in the background was toned down, due to Academy scientists’ concerns about its scientific accuracy. In 2011, an additional audiovisual element was added to create moving herds on the plain behind the lions.

Special thanks to Roberta Brett for her stories about the process of moving African Hall!

Kelly Jensen
- Digital Production Assistant

Teachers' Lounge 

Think Evolution: A summer institute for science educators

Monday, 04/29/13

Calling all middle school, high school, and community college biology teachers and science educators!

Put on your evolution eyeglasses and your nature of science thinking cap and join the University of California Museum of Paleontology for (yet another) fun-filled five days of evolutionary explorations with biologists and educators at the University of California. The Think Evolution Summer Institute, returning for its fifth year, will combine lectures by prominent evolutionary biologists with sessions focused on hands-on activities for the middle school, high school, and community college classroom. Topics this year include genomics, phylogeography of amphibians, biogeography of moths, the evolution of gossip, and natural selection.

When: Monday through Friday, July 29–August 2, 2013; 9:00 am to 3:00 pm
Who: Middle school, high school, and community college biology teachers and science educators
Where: UC Museum of Paleontology, Valley Life Sciences Building, UC Berkeley
Cost: $75.00 for five days; includes lots of free resources distributed to participating teachers plus morning and afternoon snacks. Plus a field trip to our very own Academy for a tour of Human Odyssey.
For more information: Visit the program website
To Register: Click here soon as the course fills up quickly!

**NOTE: This is not an Academy hosted course. Please direct all questions and requests for more information to Louise S. Mead or Lisa White.**

Teachers' Lounge 

Animal Observations at Homeschool Day

Friday, 04/26/13

We want to thank everyone who attended our spring Homeschool Day on Tuesday, April 23!

The Academy was hopping with Homeschoolers and their families learning in the Academy exhibits, discovering in the Naturalist Center, and observing our animals to collect data.

For those who were not at our Homeschool Day event this spring, we invited all attendees to take some time to explore some of the animals at the Academy.

Reptiles!
Younger learners collected observations on adaptations of reptiles in our Rainforest and Aquarium. Here is the activity guide they used to find their way.

Those who shared their data found reptiles in many colors of the rainbow! See a picture of the chart they made:

Did you see a reptile in the Rainforest or Aquarium? If so, tell us about what colors you saw and how those colors help it survive in its habitat? (You can use the comment option below to tell us!)

Bird Behavior
Older homeschoolers were invited to be an Academy biologist for the day and take careful observations of the behaviors of some of the live birds that we have in our Academy exhibits.

Using this worksheet, kids made tallys of penguin and macaw behaviors.

We compiled all the results into graphs that you can use to compare what you observed at Homeschool Day to what other homeschoolers observed on the same day! See the results here.

Let us know what types of behaviors you and your family saw at Homeschool Day! (Use the comments section below to share what penguin and macaw behaviors you observed.)

Tell us what you thought about your experience at Homeschool Day. Share your feedback on our survey before May 8th!

Project Lab 

What is an animal?

Friday, 04/26/13

It may seem like a basic question, but ask someone and listen to the variety of responses that you get and sometimes, a bit of confusion and uncertainty.  This week I’m going to diverge from my recent themes of fieldwork, research and nudibranchs and focus on something a little bit more central to biology.

A couple years ago, I was designing an activity for a lesson plan (see it here).  The activity was based on the game “Guess Who,” but features some classic California coast animals including some fish, sea urchins, and sea anemones.  When it came time to test it out, I asked a (non-biologist) friend of mine to play with me.  Halfway through the game, my friend made a comment about how half of the cards weren’t animals.  WHAT???  I was taken aback, why of course they are ALL animals!   Here is the dialogue that followed,

Me: Well, how do you define an animal?

Friend: Something with a face.

Me: Do you consider an insect to be an animal?

Friend: No.

Me: But insects have faces…

At this point, another friend jumped in

Friend2: Oh I know, an animal produces milk, has hair and…

Me: That’s the definition of a mammal!

And that seems to be the source of some of this confusion.  Many folks confuse the definition of “animal” with the definition of “mammal,” or sometimes “vertebrate.”  But the reality is that mammals (approximately 5,700 described species) and vertebrates (animals with a backbone, approx. 62,000 described species, including mammals) make up a small minority of the animal life on our planet. The vast majority of the animal life on our planet are invertebrates (animals without a backbone) including insects, spiders, snails, clams, seastars and many animals that your wildest dreams couldn’t imagine (approx. 1.2 million described species, with many more to be discovered).

So what is an animal, then?

First thing’s first.  All of the categories of life that you may hear about are created and defined by humans to better understand the life on our planet.  The categories themselves change as we learn more about the relationships between different living things.  Occasionally, some organisms do not fit neatly into the categories we’ve created, and the following is my attempt to simplify this, so it should be taken with a grain of salt.  If this stuff truly interests you, I encourage you to learn more because the life on our planet is SUPER fascinating stuff!  That’s why I became a biologist in the first place. : )

To be an animal, you must be a living thing and you must be made up of many cells (multicellular). This criterion alone eliminates the bacteria and some other living things called archaea and others called protists.   Oh and by the way, not only must you be multicellular, but you have to be made up of cells that have their insides bound up in membranes (these are called eukaryotic cells).   Bacteria and archaea have cells that lack these internal membranes, and are not multicellular, so they definitely do not fit the definition of an animal.

There are some additional requirements to qualify as an animal.  To be an animal, the cells that make you up must form specialized tissues or you must be made up of different types of cells.  You also cannot have a hard structure around your cells called a cell wall.  Multicellular living things that have cell walls made up of a substance called cellulose are what we call plants, and most plants use energy from the sun to create their own food (the process known as photosynthesis).  Animals cannot directly undergo photosynthesis (I know of some sea slug exceptions to this rule!).  Multicellular living things that have cell walls that contain a substance called chitin are what we call fungus (though there are some species of fungus that are single-celled, but let’s not get too complicated today).

So the next time you wonder, is that an animal?  You could run through the above requirements (multicellular, cells with no cell wall and cannot make its own food through photosynthesis), though that might seem a bit overwhelming.  Often time if someone asks me if something is an animal, I’ll just ask, well, is it a plant or a fungus? If not, then it’s likely an animal since you can’t see most bacteria or archaea with your naked eye and unless you are looking under a microscope you are unlikely to observe any protists in person.  I will admit that some animals, like corals and sea squirts can be a bit tricky since they don’t move around much, and some folks might mistake them for plants, but the most important thing to remember is that things like insects, corals and worms are animals!

So why does this matter?  I can think of several reasons why this matters, but I will focus on 2 main reasons:

1.  People’s understanding of this directly impacts conservation.  For example, corals are animals and some species of corals are responsible for the beautiful and economically important coral reefs on our planet.  If people do not understand that these are animals, how will we understand the threats they face (pollution, climate change, ocean acidification) and how to protect them?

2. By ignoring the animals that don’t have faces, or don’t have hair, you are missing out on the majority of the animal life living on our planet, and you are missing out on some pretty cool animals that have life histories that are far more interesting than any science fiction I’ve ever read.

So until next time, enjoy one of my favorite invertebrate animals…

Vanessa Knutson

Project Lab Coordinator and Graduate Student

Chief Penguin 

Online Access to the Academy’s Collections

Wednesday, 04/24/13

New and improved web portals for our biodiversity collections are now online. The basic functions are working, while the specific configurations are being refined. New features and content are being added weekly. Check out the links on this page marked as “New Portal”.

While our basic collections data have been publicly available on the web for a decade, the new portals mark the first time that we have provided data, images, and mapping capabilities in a single integrated website. We have now published more than 1.28 million specimen records via the collection portals, and more than 700,000 of these can be mapped using latitude-longitude data. The map below, for example, shows the collecting localities from our fish collections using a “heat map,” where darker red means more data from that spot.

The 1.28 million records we are publishing are just the first of our estimated 28 million to represent the Academy in the digital world. They represent years of work by Academy staff, and will help us document species distributions and monitor the potential effects of climate change on biodiversity.

Gulf of Guinea Expeditions 

The Race: GG VII First Week: Snakes, Workshops and Spiders

Tuesday, 04/23/13

Our first week is now complete. The botanists and Andrew our photographer went to Príncipe early so I will include their progress in a later blog. One thing I will add though is a picture Andrew emailed us yesterday, a shot of the endemic diurnal green snake, the Príncipe Soá-soá. We have only been able to collect one of these (GG I); it is an extremely elusive species.

Hapsidophrys principis, A. Standbridge photo, GG VII

Signe Mikulane, a PhD student at the University of Heidelberg had been in contact with me during the past few months and delayed her return to Germany to be with us for a week.  She joined us in our early school visits, and especially our annual check of the status of the large tree where we find the Sao Tome giant treefrog.

Bob and Signe, V. Schnoll photo, GG VII

We found no adults but Signe dug her hand into the tree hole and came up with tadpoles, so we know the tree is still in use. In the picture above, there are several tadpoles in her hands.

Velma Schnoll & Signe Mikulane return from the frog tree, RCD photo, GG VII

With the arrival of Roberta Ayres (and Dr. Szuts) the biodiversity education team was complete.

Ayres and Szuts arrive in Sao Tome, RCD photo, GG VII

Saturday we held our first ever teacher workshop at Escola Primaria Maria de Jesus, the largest primary school in the country (2,000+ kids).

RCD photo, GG VII

We spoke to 58 teachers (all of them) about island biodiversity in more depth so that they can use the materials we have brought more efficiently. The hour and a half presentation was extremely well received, even though we had to project our powerpoint on the back of a canvas painting!

RCD photo, GG VII

Although we are concentrating on fourth grade this year, the teachers were from all grades and we have already noticed that our materials, the posters, the coloring books, etc. are used widely at many different levels.

Education Team: Velma Schnoll, Roberta Ayers, Roberta dos Santos, RCD photo, GG VII

Dr. Tamas Szuts, Professor of Biology at the University of West Hungary is our jumping spider expert. We took him into the field early, to the south end of the island and he began collecting.

Tamas is using a simple sweep net, RCD photo, GG VII

Tamas is using a beating pan here. He holds it beneath a bush and beats the latter. By the way, these pictures do not do Tamas justice. He is about 6’ 8” tall.

Tamas with beating pan, RCD photo, GG VII

He brings specimens back live and then photographs them in great detail.  This is Tamas’s photo setup in our room and the results are truly spectacular.  By the way, the bottle on the right is NOT vodka; it is lab grade ethyl alcohol for the preservation of DNA.

Tamas photo setup, RCD photo, GG VII

The second two images are salticid, or jumping spiders; the first is of a different group.

Spider, T. Szuts photo, GG VII

Spider, T. Szuts photo, GG VII

Spider, T. Szuts photo, GG VII

In this YouTube video, Tamas Szuts describes his fieldwork: URL: http://youtu.be/LDdFMn0eARw

More soon when Rayna, our frog student arrives and we reunite with the rest of the science team.

Here’s the parting shot:

Satocao workers returning from cacao plantation, V. Schnoll photo, GG VII

PARTNERS

We are most grateful to Arlindo de Ceita Carvalho, Director General, Victor Bomfim, and Salvador Sousa Pontes of the Ministry of Environment, Republic of São Tomé and Príncipe for their continuing authorization to collect and export specimens for study, and to Ned Seligman, Roberta dos Santos and Quintino Quade of STePUP of Sao Tomehttp://www.stepup.st/, our “home away from home”. We gratefully acknowledge the support of the G. Lindsay Field Research Fund, Hagey Research Venture Fund of the California Academy of Sciences for largely funding our initial two expeditions (GG I, II). The Société de Conservation et Développement (SCD) and Africa’s Eden provided logistics, ground transportation and lodging (GG III-V), and special thanks for the generosity of private individuals who made the GG III-V expeditions possible: George G. Breed, Gerry F. Ohrstrom, Timothy M. Muller, Mrs. W. H. V. Brooke, Mr. and Mrs. Michael Murakami, Hon. Richard C. Livermore, Prof. & Mrs. Evan C. Evans III, Mr. and Mrs. Robert M. Taylor, Velma and Michael Schnoll, and Sheila Farr Nielsen; GG VI supporters include Bom Bom Island and the Omali Lodge for logistics and lodging, The Herbst Foundation, The “Blackhawk Gang,” the Docent Council of the California Academy of Sciences in honor of Kathleen Lilienthal, Bernard S. Schulte, Corinne W. Abel, Prof. & Mrs. Evan C. Evans III, Mr. and Mrs. John Sears, John S. Livermore and Elton Welke. GG VII has been funded by a very generous grant from The William K. Bowes Jr. Foundation, and substantial donations from Mrs. W.H.V.“D.A.” Brooke, Thomas B. Livermore, Rod C. M. Hall, Timothy M. Muller, Prof. and Mrs. Evan C. Evans, Mr. and Mrs. John L. Sullivan Jr., Clarence G. Donahue, Mr. and Mrs. John Sears, and a heartening number of “Coolies”, “Blackhawk Gang” returnees and members of the Academy Docent Council. Once again we are deeply grateful for the continued support of the Omali Lodge (São Tomé) and Bom Bom Island (Príncipe) for both logistics and lodging and especially for sponsoring part our education efforts for GG VII.

Our expeditions can be supported by tax-deductable donations to “California Academy of Sciences Gulf of Guinea Fund”

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