One of my highlights at #ssb2026 meeting last weekend was reconnecting with my amazing friend Emily Graslie @ehmee.bsky.social of #BrainScoop and seeing her outstanding keynote presentation on her career path and the importance of museum collections @systbiol.bsky.social #CollectionsAreEssential

Super thanks again!
@prosanta.bsky.social
@tropicalbotany.bsky.social
@jeclight.bsky.social
@sternarchella.bsky.social
@ixchelgr.bsky.social
#CollectionsAreEssential

Una era de descubrimiento de especies de mamíferos en Latinoamérica y el Caribe: conteos y comentarios sobre la práctica taxonómica 🦇🦥🐒🐀

link.springer.com/rwe/10.1007/...

#CollectionsAreEssential #ColeccionesBiológicas
#taxonomy #taxonomía
#mammalogy #mastozoologia

Haley standing in front of her introductory slide

Post defense picture of Haley & myself standing in front of a screen where her committee members are pictured

Congratulations to my fabulous student Haley! She successfully defended her Master’s thesis yesterday! #Peromyscus #mammals #morphology #ecology #collectionsareessential @tamueccb.bsky.social

Evolución ecomorfológica convergente en roedores 🐿️🦫🐀

doi.org/10.1093/biol...

Trabajo basado en colecciones y liderado por @liomys.mx

#Rodentia #collectionsAreEssential #ColeccionesBiológicas

Specimens and models of fungi

Open House at the Mushroom Museum!

Bob Dirig showing his lichen collection

Lichen specimens

Yesterday I had the pleasure of visiting the Cornell University Plant Pathology Herbarium (CUP) for their Open House at the Mushroom Museum! @cornellcals.bsky.social #CollectionsAreEssential

Deconstructing the morphological basis of ecogeographic variation in the hand-wing index, a widely used proxy for avian mobility, in the Yellow Warbler (Setophaga petechia)
@asn-amnat.bsky.social doi.org/10.1086/739176
#birds #collectionsareessential #museums #ornithology #evosky

Super excited to finally share this! #CollectionsAreEssential

2/N Many of these individuals are part of @mepa-social-media.bsky.social. The paper provides data on existing genetic resources from mammals available to researchers to study emerging infectious diseases, such as hantaviruses, arenaviruses, and other zoonotic pathogens.

#collectionsareessential

A comprehensive survey of mammal collections and genetic resources in South America: challenges and directions Abstract. Natural history collections serve as crucial infrastructure for both basic and applied scientific research, providing temporal and spatial specim

1/N Check out our recent publication on South American mammal voucher and tissue collections!!! This paper was led by Marcelo Weksler, Guellermo D'Elia, and Pablo Teta, but it included contributions from over 100 scientists.

#mammalogy #collectionsareessential #onehealth

Colecciones de Mamíferos de Am. del Sur. 141 colecciones y ∼746 000 especímenes. 4 desafíos: escasez de personal, infraestructura criogénica mínima, digitalización incompleta y problemas de sostenibilidad.

academic.oup.com/biolinnean/a...

#ColeccionesBiológicas #CollectionsAreEssential

The University of Michigan crew is in full force at the Annual Meeting of the @mammalogists.bsky.social!!! It’s been great to bring so many current and former students together.

#gobluemammalogy #naturalhistory #collectionsareessential

#CollectionsAreEssential

@mfnberlin.bsky.social @naturhistoriska #birds #ornithology #collectionsareessential #museomics #naturalhistory #genomics

Harnessing natural history collections for collaborative pandemic preparedness Five years after the outbreak of the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic, we have the opportunity to gather lessons learned about needed infrastructure for predicting, und

Check out our new paper in #BioScience!!! If COVID taught us anything, we very much need to be doubling down on our scientific structure and not regressing, and we need to improve collaborative networks that transcend geopolitical boundaries.

#naturalhistory #collectionsareessential

#BiodiversityDay #Biodiversity #ornithology #evolution #popgen #Genomics #naturalhistory #collectionsareessential #birds #Phd
@mfnberlin.bsky.social

This is only possible if you keep collecting things. #CollectionsAreEssential Not only that, you gotta collect large enough sample sizes of common things, not just a few individuals of uncommon things.

Some of the #ummz mammal division students got in on a little moose antler cleaning today!!! The antlers were part of a donation to our collection, but needed a little TLC before going into the cabinets.

#naturalhistory #collectionsareessential #gobluemammalogy

Close up photo that I took of mountain beaver fleas at the Burke Museum at the University of Washington in Seattle

Photo I took at the Burke Museum at the University of Washington in Seattle of a taxidermied mountain beaver along side it's massive fleas that are mounted in a petri plate

MOUNTAIN BEAVER pauses for a big scratch... of the world's largest flea, Hystrichopsylla schefferi! While scratching #MMMagic translocates Mountain Beaver into a roadside puddle PECCARY is bathing in! (Carraway & Verts 1993, Hubbard, 1947) #2025MMM #CollectionsAreEssential @burkemuseum.bsky.social

Corrie Moreau in the Naturalis museum in Leiden, Netherlands

So excited be at Naturalis @naturalis.bsky.social today and tomorrow serving on their Scientific Advisory Board! Stunning building, outstanding collections, impactful research, and engaging exhibits #CollectionsAreEssential #NaturalHistoryMuseums

@drfirefly.bsky.social and I are hitting up the STEAM night at a local elementary!!!

#naturalhistory #collectionsareessential

UMMZ Mammals ‪University of Michigan Museum of Zoology, Mammal Division‬ - ‪‪Cited by 97,506‬‬ - ‪Mammalogy‬ - ‪Evolution‬ - ‪Systematics‬ - ‪Taxonomy‬ - ‪Biogeography‬

I am glad that this project has been published! We will be sure to add it to our Google Scholar page (scholar.google.com/citations?us...). Another great example of why #naturalhistory #collectionsareessential.

Big thanks to @codythompson51.bsky.social and UMMZ who gave us access to collections an enabled us to test these ideas. Took a long time, but we did it!
#collectionsareessential

Long-term increases in wing length occur independently of changes in climate and climate-driven shifts in body size | Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences Recent widespread reductions in body size across species have been linked to increasing temperatures; simultaneous increases in wing length relative to body size have been broadly observed but remain ...

Morphological changes in 5 migratory birds, based on specimen data #collectionsareessential
#resurveys #globalchange #ecology #ornithology #museums #anthropocene royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/full/10....

Wolverine skull from 1948 marks 10,000th CT scan at University of Michigan museums center Researchers used a series of X-rays to 3D-scan the skull, collected in remote British Columbia nearly 80 years ago. It is part of an effort to digitally catalogue the university museums' archive.

Last Friday our microCT lab scanned its 10,000th specimen! Not surprisingly, it was a wolverine.

#GoBlue #BeatOhio #mammalogy #naturalhistory #collectionsareessential

Listen to Chucky D !

See you at Darwin Day 🧬 🐟 🐸 🦎 🐦 🐳 🌺 #SDSUBiodiversityMuseum #CollectionsAreEssential

Let’s Talk Mammals with Dr. Cody Thompson | U-M LSA Ecology and Evolutionary Biology (EEB) Darwin might be jealous. Dr. Cody Thompson has a front row view for watching animals evolve in real time.

This was a fun interview!!!

#mammalogy #naturalhistory #collectionsareessential

It was an honor to assemble and lead this talented group of Latin American scientists in the first ever *MEPA Field+Genomics Workshop* at Otongachi, Ecuador. #collectionsAreEssential

@Museo_QCAZ @CISeAL_PUCE @PUCE_Ecuador @ResearchAtKU @kunhm @KU_EEB @UNM_MSB

Indeed this is a common answer: no one has compared across taxa. It's hard to get funding, although it's a great example of what you can (start to) do within museums #CollectionsAreEssential

California Academy of Sciences reeling from budget cuts A major natural history collection loses one-quarter of its curators

Cutting 25% of your curatorial staff due to 8% decrease in attendance --> Bad strategic plan and fund development.

All that shitty tech money in the area and not one of these "thought leaders" has been hit up for 10 million annually.

#CollectionsAreEssential

www.science.org/content/arti...