You may think your last Karaoke session sounded great, but we’ve got nothing compared to the natural ability birds have to sing from early on in life. Birds use sound to attract a mate, defend their territory, sound a danger alarm to nearby birds and communicate with their mate, young and flock members. Although most birds will sing one song for their entire life, some species of birds such as parrots, starlings and some songbirds can incorporate new sounds into the repertoire over time.  This week in the Project Lab I prepared a Zebra Finch, a species that has been studied for their vocalizations.

Young male Zebra Finch (Taeniopygia guttata) learn their song from a father or mentor.   Without this guidance, the Zebra Finch can have a song that sounds very different from the typical melody heard in most Zebra Finches.  The brains of the young males need to process their mentor’s song at a specific age to make the connection between their own sounds and the song they will need to learn to attract a mate.  The resulting song is the song of their mentor plus a few notes acquired from random environmental noises.  Many researchers use these Finches and the neurological pathways that are used to learn their specific song to study acquisition of speech in humans.  Although these little birds can be studied for their human applications, bird song can also be used in systematics.

In some bird songs there are distinct differences in vocalizations between populations.  Researching these differences in bird songs can help identify and discover subspecies or genetic lineages.  Many researchers use the Ornithology and Mammalogy research collection to collect genetic and morphological data for their studies. Using this in conjunction with audio recordings, researchers are able to better address their research goals.

Codie Otte
Curatorial Assistant and Specimen Preparator
Ornithology & Mammalogy Department

I recently returned from a month of field work in Alaska where I was collecting blood samples from birds at various latitudes in the state. I will analyze these samples as a part of my Masters Degree thesis at San Francisco State University under Dr. Ravinder Sehgal, where I am studying avian malaria and the ways it may spread in the Arctic due to climate change. Like human malaria, the avian malaria parasite is spread via insect vectors such as mosquitoes; however, it does not always appear to affect birds as drastically as the human version affects us. Although not all infected birds die, studying the change in prevalence of the parasite in birds will serve as a model for how human malaria may be able to spread into new territory due to climate change. We predict that as the climate warms in Arctic regions, where avian malaria historically was not present, temperatures will become suitable for mosquitoes to survive in, allowing the parasite to be passed on to birds in that region. Combined with blood samples from the past 12 years, my lab has over 2000 samples from throughout Alaska that I will be screening for malaria and comparing with climate data to look for patterns.

In the field, I collected birds by using mist nets, a series of 12 meter long fine mesh nets commonly used to collect birds. The nets are placed in areas where birds commonly fly. The birds cannot see the net and become tangled when they fly into it. Once a bird is caught, I remove it, bring it back to our processing station (a tent to keep the mosquitoes out), and place an identification metal band on the bird’s leg. Next, I take a small blood sample from the brachial vein in the wing, and then release it unharmed (other than a small prick on the wing). The band does not inhibit the bird from functioning as normal, so no animals are injured in this process.

I traveled to Alaska with a team from UC Davis who is trying to figure out which species of mosquitoes are actually transmitting malaria to the birds. We had a great trip even though the weather wasn’t very cooperative, and eventually got used to 24 hours of daylight. Now that we’re back in California, we are processing all of our samples. Hopefully we’ll get some interesting results!

Laura Wilson
Curatorial Assistant
Ornithology and Mammalogy

Deep within the bowels of the Academy’s insect collection is a special cabinet known as the Oh-My! Cabinet, a special part of the collection with unusual, rare, or otherwise especially interesting specimens. My blog this week focuses on one of the drawers in this cabinet that tells an interesting, but controversial story. The Goju-no-to is a five-story pagoda, a part of the Todaiji Temple in Nara, Japan that was originally constructed in 725. In 1950, some work was being done on the temple, exposing the original foundation. A specimen of the Buprestid beetle Chrysocoa fulgidissima was reputedly found in the foundation timbers, which would make it a 1,300 year old specimen! Part of the controversy arises from the wording used by Austin W. Morrill Jr. of San Francisco who donated the specimen to the Academy. In his donation description, he (or someone else) writes, “The beetle was collected from the foundation timbers in 1950. The beetle emerged from the early foundation timbers, and therefore it seems likely to be nearly 1300 years old.”

Part of the controversy is the use of the word “emerged,” which to most entomologists suggests a living beetle. While it is quite within the realm of possibility that the exoskeleton of a beetle could survive unharmed in a protected location for such a long period of time, it does not seem likely that a living beetle could survive. A more recent specimen of the same species was collected in Nara in 1951, and looks about the same as the reputed ancient example.
We may never prove this one way or the other, but it makes for an interesting story!

Vic Smith
Invertebrate biologist, curatorial assistant and imaging specialist
Department of Entomology

This weekend I prepared three birds, Ptychoramphus aleuticus (Cassins Auklet), Oceanodroma homochroa (Ashy Storm Petrel), and Vireo gilvus (Warbling Vireo), found on the Southeast Farallon Islands (SEFI).

Most of the time Academy guests can find me preparing study skins in the Project Lab, but I also employ other methods to preserve specimens for the Ornithology and Mammalogy research collection.  For the three specimens from SEFI, I chose to preserve them in Ethyl Alcohol (EtOH), which has the advantage of keeping the entire bird for later research.  When creating specimens for our O&M collection the preparator must keep in mind the pros and cons of each type of preservation whether it be a “study skin” which preserves the external parts of the animal for dry storage, a “skeleton” which preserves only the bones of the body also for dry storage, or an “alcohol” specimen which preserves the entire body in liquid.

Since these three specimens were found on the Farallon islands, an important stop during bird migration and breeding ground for many seabirds, preserving them in Ethyl Alcohol will give the most complete picture of what the birds were doing when they died.  Later research can not only look at the physiology and morphology of the specimen, but we can also examine stomach contents to see what the bird ate or examine other internal organs to determine the overall health of the bird.

For the Ashy Storm Petrel, a bird considered a species of special concern, keeping all body parts can be especially helpful.  As a species that breeds on the Farallones, introduced species such as predatory cats and rats can have a huge impact on bird populations.  Using the specimens of the collection here at the Academy, researchers can determine population change over time by examining the locality distribution of found specimens.  Only time will tell if this Ashy storm Petrel has a special story to tell about life on the ocean but that story is invaluable to gaining a larger picture of its entire species.  The more we know about species populations the better we can provide conservation guidelines for the future health of all species!

Codie Otte
Curatorial Assistant and Specimen Preparator
Ornithology & Mammalogy Department

For two solid weeks, I worked in the Project Lab preparing for the International Opisthobranch Conference at UC Santa Cruz. The focus of my talk for the conference was on unraveling the Doto coronata species complex. The background on this species complex was discussed in a previous blog entry (4/4/12). The aim of the talk was to compare the COI gene sequences of several specimens thought to be D. coronata from Wales, Maine, South Africa, and the North Sea. The species D. tuberculata and D. millbayana were also included in the comparison to confirm whether they were in fact different from those with the name D. coronata. Unraveling the D. coronata complex is important to my research since this species is representative of the Doto genus (i.e. it is the “type species.”).

The International Opisthobranch Conference brought together students and scientists from ten countries to share and discuss their research on marine slugs. Part of doing science is sharing the knowledge and significance of one’s research with other scientists and the community. Conferences are paramount to doing science since they nurture the curiosity and collaboration of scientists interested in answering a diverse array of unknown questions.

Research projects can be easier to complete when working collaboratively with other scientists interested in solving related problems. As a researcher, it can be difficult to know who else in the world could be working on a project similar to your own. This can be a problem since significant research needs to be original. Thankfully, Bernard Picton, from the National Museum of Northern Ireland, connected me to Guillermo Diaz-Agras from Ferrol, Spain who is researching the morphology of the N. Atlantic Doto. In collaboration with Guillermo, I presented some of my recent research findings at the conference. He and I will be working to further clarify this challenging and ambiguous complex, which is an integral part of my graduate thesis.

Carissa Shipman
Masters Student
Invertebrate Zoology & Geology Department

Every summer, the Academy offers a research program for undergraduate students called the Summer Systematics Institute (SSI). During this 8-week program, students work with Academy scientists on research projects that address questions about biodiversity, phylogenetic systematics and evolutionary biology. The SSI program is now in its 17th year, and here on the Project Lab blog, one of its current students, Wendee Augustiro, shares her experience in the program:

The amount of variation amongst plants is truly astounding.  Trying to understand the evolution of plant diversity is a large part of why I study botany.  Since plants are all around us and have a critical role for life on earth, I am constantly in a state of wonder. This is especially true now that I am participating in the California Academy of Science’s Summer Systematics Institute (SSI), where I am learning skills and using tools to study plant diversification. Currently, I am an undergraduate at the University of Hawaii, Manoa, and study mostly native Hawaiian plants. This is fascinating to me because of the number of lineages that have diversified in our relatively young islands.

As part of the SSI, I am working with Dr. Gilberto Ocampo to study the evolutionary relationships among a group of species within the tribe Miconieae (Melastomataceae). This is part of the Planetary Biodiversity Inventory project on the tribe (funded by the National Science Foundation), with collaborators from  the California Academy of Sciences, The New York Botanical Garden, the University of Florida, and the Universidade Federal de Paraná (Brazil). The tribe comprises 18 genera and about 1,800 species distributed in the New World tropics, and its species have an important role in the ecosystem because of the number of individuals in forest understories and because it is an important food source for many birds and mammals.

In particular, I am studying a group of around 30 species distributed from southern Mexico to northern South America, informally called the “Secundiflorae clade”. This group contains species recognized in two different genera, Leandra and Ossaea, but DNA analyses suggest they share a common ancestor. In addition, species of this clade share flower arrangement and seed morphology, supporting the relationships inferred by the molecular data. For this project, I am using molecular (chloroplast and nuclear DNA) and morphological data (measurements of vegetative and reproductive structures) in order to understand the variation of this group under a phylogenetic framework.

I plan to take the methods I learn at the Academy and apply them to study the evolutionary history of native Hawaiian species.  I feel lucky that I have the opportunity to come to San Francisco and be a small piece in a larger puzzle that will help us to understand the evolution of this vibrant group of melastomes.

Wendee Augustiro

Geckos are well known for their gravity-defying ability to climb up vertical and inverted surfaces, whether they’re trees, rocks, walls, ceilings or glass windows. Of the approximate 1,450 species of geckos, around 60% of them have adhesive toepads that allow them to exploit vertical habitats that aren’t easily accessible to other animals. This amazing adaptation has inspired scientists to engineer bio-mimicry technologies such as robots that can scale walls and new adhesive materials. So how do geckos do it? Several mechanisms have been proposed and disproven; these include suction, glue, interlocking, electrostatic attraction and friction. But instead, it’s been discovered that geckos hold on using weak attractive intermolecular forces (aka Van der Waals forces) with the help from specialized structures on their toepads.

In the Project Lab, I have been able to get a look at the toes of the different gecko species that I’ve been photographing from the Herpetology collection. In the photographs above, you can see that their toes are covered in rows of leaf-like structures called lamellae. An even closer look using a scanning electron microscope would reveal that these lamellae are carpeted with hair-like setae, the ends of which are split into hundreds of nano-sized hairs called spatulae. Altogether, a gecko can have a billion spatulae, making intimate contact with the substrate surface. The combined attractive force of all of the weak molecular interactions between the spatulae and the surface is equivalent to about 600 pounds per square inch! But if gecko toes are so ‘sticky,’ you may wonder how they even lift their feet up.  Geckos actually bend their toes in the opposite direction to human fingers and toes, and this allows them to peel their toes up from surfaces. This peeling action changes the angle of the setae, thereby reducing the Van der Waals force and releasing the foot.

Traditionally, it was thought that adhesive toepads evolved only once within geckos, but surprisingly, a recent study suggests that they evolved independently ELEVEN times (Gamble et al 2012)! It is truly incredible to think that natural selection repeatedly drove the evolution of such an extraordinary adaptation. There’s definitely still a lot more that scientists and engineers can learn from the natural world.

References:

Gamble T, Greenbaum E, Jackman TR, Russell AP, Bauer AM (2012) Repeated Origin and Loss of Adhesive Toepads in Geckos. PLoS ONE 7(6): e39429. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0039429

During a visit to California Academy of Sciences, you might find yourself standing in front of the Project Lab asking, “What is that person doing in there?” And if you happened to ask that question today the answer would be: discovering new beetles! Although most of my time in the Project Lab is spent working on my PhD dissertation research studying the biogeography and evolutionary relationships of snail-eating beetles, today is not a normal day in the Project lab. Today, I am identifying and describing new beetle species previously unknown to science.

These tiny little beetles hail from Australia and come out at night to prey on other insects. Entomologists like myself use morphology (body shapes and structures) and DNA to help us determine if an insect is a new species. Sometimes something as trivial as a tiny hair or a wrinkle can be crucial to identifying a species. Additionally, two insects that may look identical to the naked eye could be very distantly related once we look at their DNA!

Here in the Project Lab, I will examine specimens from natural history museums world-wide in order to determine which ones are new species. Many microscope hours later, I will use our Auto-montage imaging system to capture high-resolution photographs of each new species. Finally, I will provide a written description and name for each new species. Getting to choose the name of a brand new species is a perk well worth all of that hard work!

Meghan Culpepper
PhD Candidate
Entomology Department

Most Californians could probably guess our state tree (the redwood), our state mineral (gold), and our state flower (golden poppy), but most people I talk to don’t realize that California has a state insect, the California Dogface Butterfly. First proposed in 1929, the Dogface (Zerene Eurydice ) became the official California State Insect in 1972. Other states soon followed suite, and most states now have an official insect. Named for a pattern on the male’s wings that resembles a poodle’s head, this butterfly was once also known as the “flying pansy”, and appeared on a U.S. postage stamp under its old name, Colias eurydice. The larvae of this butterfly feed only on the California False Indigo (Amorpha californica), while adults feed on nectar of thistles. More commonly seen in Southern California, the Dogface has become more difficult to find in our area, mostly due to destruction of its woodland chaparral habitat.

Deep in the bowels of the Academy’s insect collection is a special cabinet, referred to as the “OH-WOW” collection, containing many rare and unusual insects which highlight some especially interesting aspects of our collection. One of the drawers contains a collection of Southern and California Dogface butterflies collected by a British researcher in the 1930’s, showing the variation of colors and patterns among these animals. Of special interest is one rare specimen, known as a gynandromorph. Due to a mishap during reproduction, this individual is male on one side, and female on the other. This situation is uncommon, but is seen in a wide range of organisms. While I don’t know about this particular case, sometimes these animals can be functional as both sexes!

In my next blog, I will continue to expose some of the wonders contained in our “oh-wow” cabinet.

Vic Smith
Invertebrate biologist, curatorial assistant and imaging specialist
Department of Entomology

In collaboration with the new Earthquake exhibit, the Project Lab has been shaking things up a bit as well by working on some pretty special specimens!

This past week during Nightlife volunteers Kari Olila and Rosalind Henning flensed some Ostrich (Struthio camelus) leg bones for the Exhibits department.  These huge bones help Ostriches stand about 6-9 feet tall and run over 40 miles per hour.  Aside from looking a bit different from the typical bird we see around the city, Ostriches have some distinctly different features from their other avian relatives.

Most birds have bones that have been adapted to their lifestyle in the air.  Their structure is hollow with an internal pattern of supportive struts making their skeleton much lighter than animals of similar size.  If you cut a slice out of a bird’s bone it would looks a bit like a sponge. Since Ostriches do not fly, many of their bones are like our own-solid bone encasing a tube of marrow.  With such heavy legs it would be extremely difficult for an Ostrich to ever take flight, but instead they have bones that can withstand pressure from walking and standing.  We see solid bones in other flightless birds like the Emu and even some penguins.

A second adaptation of flightless birds is their lack of keel.  A keel is the bird’s breastbone with a single process running the length of the ventral side.  This keel provides structural support for the muscle attachment of the breast muscle.  Unlike the relatively thin layer of muscle we humans have on our chest, birds have large chest muscles to flap their wings and provide flight.  Because the Ostrich and other flightless birds have no need to take to the wing, their breastbone is relatively flat in comparison to other birds.

Now that Kari and Rosalind have prepared the Ostrich bones, the next step is to mascerate the bones, which means submerging the bones in warm water until the remaining muscle and tissue releases from the bone. Next an ammonia bath will help to leach out any grease leaving the bones dry and clean.  Preparing skeletons for museum collections and exhibits can be extremely helpful to researchers.  Although these specific Ostrich bones will be used for public educational purposes, the Ornithology and Mammalogy research collection is a library of skeletons and study skins that use this exact process to preserve avian and mammal life history.  Using our collection to look at skeletal differences between birds that have flight and those that do not can help trace the ancestry of different types of birds.  Form follows function for most of our bones, and researchers can extrapolate upon this information, gaining insight into the lifestyles of different species.

Codie Otte
Curatorial Assistant and Specimen Preparator
Ornithology & Mammalogy Department