CAREER: Museum-based Approaches to Ecology and Evolution of Aquatic Systems: An Integrated Research and Educational Program

University Of New Mexico, Albuquerque NM

Investigators

Abstract

Abstract This project will create a research, education, and training program in the Museum of Southwestern Biology (MSB) at the University of New Mexico. Participating graduate and undergraduate students will gain a fundamental understanding of how natural history collections acquire, document, and database specimens, to provide an historical record of our rich natural heritage. Students will then use this knowledge and a collection of museum specimens held in the Division of Fishes that spans a 65-year history in two research objectives aimed at identifying the underlying causes of ecological change in the fish fauna of the imperiled Rio Grande aquatic ecosystem. First, stable isotope methodology will be used to compare present-day and museum-preserved fish specimens, to determine whether the fish community functioned differently in the past (prior to human population growth and large-scale water diversion) than at present. This research is designed to identify ecosystem-wide events that may have altered fish community dynamics in the Rio Grande. Second, abundance patterns of certain fish species will be evaluated using the collection and compared to current estimates of genetic diversity to ascertain whether reduced abundance has changed genetic diversity in ways that hamper species recovery. Both research efforts are focused on important issues for conservation and restoration of the Rio Grande. Natural history collections are becoming increasingly important for documenting and understanding the changes in biodiversity on the planet because they preserve an historical record of organismal diversity. Moreover, natural history collections have been used to address important issues in human health such as the origins and emergence of Hantavirus in the desert southwest. There exists, however, a fundamental gap between undergraduate and graduate training and the enormous resources that natural history collections can offer for solving important problems. The goal of this project is to close that gap by familiarizing graduate and undergraduate students with the kinds of information available in natural history museums, and to show them how this information can be brought to bear on critical environmental problems using a multidisciplinary research approach. The intended result is to produce scientists that can capitalize on the vast resources offered by natural history museums in novel ways to solve environmental problems facing us in the 21st century.