Strange Smammals: Adding Unique Specimens to our Collections
Conference Year
2024
Abstract
Natural history collections are vital repositories of Earth’s biodiversity, serving as invaluable resources for scientific research, conservation efforts, and public education. One essential element in natural history collections is ensuring a wide diversity of specimens is accessible for various research projects. This is important because it allows for the comprehension of biodiversity and provides valuable resources for comparative studies. Although the UVM collection has thousands of vertebrates already, there are a handful of native Vermont species that are either underrepresented, extremely old, or not present in the collection. To help fill in these gaps, I am identifying and preparing small mammal specimens, consisting of mostly Talpidae (moles) and Cricetidae (voles), as both skulls and skins for the museum, and collecting tissue samples from them. These specimens will help increase the diversity of the collection by introducing some of the rarer Vermont species and the tissue samples I collect will be archived for future work including pathogen surveillance and population genetics. I also helped develop a dichotomous key to help with the identification of these specimens.
Primary Faculty Mentor Name
Sara Helms Cahan
Graduate Student Mentors
Lauren Berkley
Status
Undergraduate
Student College
College of Arts and Sciences
Program/Major
Zoology
Primary Research Category
Life Sciences
Strange Smammals: Adding Unique Specimens to our Collections
Natural history collections are vital repositories of Earth’s biodiversity, serving as invaluable resources for scientific research, conservation efforts, and public education. One essential element in natural history collections is ensuring a wide diversity of specimens is accessible for various research projects. This is important because it allows for the comprehension of biodiversity and provides valuable resources for comparative studies. Although the UVM collection has thousands of vertebrates already, there are a handful of native Vermont species that are either underrepresented, extremely old, or not present in the collection. To help fill in these gaps, I am identifying and preparing small mammal specimens, consisting of mostly Talpidae (moles) and Cricetidae (voles), as both skulls and skins for the museum, and collecting tissue samples from them. These specimens will help increase the diversity of the collection by introducing some of the rarer Vermont species and the tissue samples I collect will be archived for future work including pathogen surveillance and population genetics. I also helped develop a dichotomous key to help with the identification of these specimens.