RAPID: CSBR: Support to Restore the Scientific Collections Damaged in the Bahamas during Hurricane Dorian

University Of Florida, Gainesville FL

Investigators

Abstract

On 1-2 September 2019, the most powerful storm ever to strike land in the North Atlantic, Hurricane Dorian, leveled Marsh Harbour, Abaco, which had been the third largest community in The Bahamas. This project provides critical support to restore the unique vertebrate fossil collection that had existed in the National Museum of The Bahamas in Marsh Harbour. Dorian destroyed the building housing this collection, which had been assembled over 15 years by Curator Nancy Albury and scientists from the Florida Museum of Natural History, University of Florida (UF). Damage from wind and water affects about 40% of the specimens and about 60% of the specimen labels. Much of the material is from coastal localities destroyed during Dorian; all that we ever will know about these prehistoric sites depends on the damaged collections. The project will repair, curate, and database the collection, thereby restoring accessibility to the global research community. Ongoing multi-disciplinary research using this collection has revised concepts of natural and cultural history of Caribbean islands, including establishing the timing of long-term faunal change (extinctions, introductions), and placing both living and extinct species (frogs, tortoises, crocodiles, lizards, snakes, birds, bats, rodents) in rigorous environmental and cultural contexts. A diverse group of UF undergraduate and graduate students will participate in all activities involving the collection, now housed entirely at UF. When the hurricane struck, about 50% of the collection already resided at UF. Catalogued specimens will be fully searchable in the UF Vertebrate Paleontology database. This project will rehabilitate, both physically and digitally, the unique vertebrate fossil collection that was badly damaged by Hurricane Dorian at the National Museum of The Bahamas (NMB) in Marsh Harbour in September 2019. This collection (from 9 cultural and 31 non-cultural prehistoric sites on 14 different Bahamian islands) had been compiled by Curator Nancy Albury and scientists from the Florida Museum of Natural History, University of Florida (UF). No research or outreach will be possible until the collection is rehabilitated. Much of the material is from coastal localities destroyed during Dorian; anything that we ever will know about these prehistoric sites depends on the damaged collections. The project will repair, curate, and database the damaged specimens and labels, thus making it available once again to the research community. Multi-disciplinary research based on this collection has featured genetic (including aDNA), morphological, stratigraphic, and radiocarbon analyses that have established the timing of long-term faunal change (extinctions, introductions), and placed both living and extinct species of vertebrates in rigorous phylogenetic, environmental, and cultural contexts. At UF, diverse project staff will clean, repair, and database the specimens, generate new labels, curate them in new cabinetry, and do web-based outreach. The NMB Excel database will be converted to Specify software in the UF Vertebrate Paleontology database (https://www.floridamuseum.ufl.edu/vertepaleo-search). The cultural specimen records also will be entered in Re:Discovery, the curation and collection management database for such collections at UF. Through Specify, the specimen data from the salvaged collections will be shared and made publicly available through iDigBio.org. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.