Dr. Aquino (far right) and colleagues in the Parana River Delta, Buenos Aires, Argentina.

In 1990 Adriana moved to La Plata, a city close to Buenos Aires. Her studies at the university there earned her a Ph.D. Her thesis was on the systematics of the Argentine representatives of a group of armored catfishes with a wide distribution in the tropical regions of South America. She applied to the university in La Plata, Argentina, because she wanted to work with the best group of ichthyologists in the country. Her advisor, Amalia Miquelarena, suggested to Adriana that she study the armored catfishes because Dr. Miquelarena knew it was a very interesting (but not very large) group of fishes, and, significantly, little known. Adriana was awarded her Ph.D. in 1994. For many years it had been her ambition to accomplish this task before she was 30 years old. At 29, she succeeded in her goal. For almost seven years in La Plata, she lived in an old, humid garage that was too cold in winter and too warm in summer just to be close to work, especially her beloved fishes.

The scientist Adriana most admired in the world was a scientist named Scott Schaefer, who was working at the Academy of Natural Sciences in Philadelphia. Dr. Schaefer worked on the very same group of catfishes as Adriana. After completing her postdoctoral research in Argentina, she applied to do further postdoctoral research in Philadelphia, with Dr. Schaefer as her supervisor. To her delight, Dr. Shaefer responded very enthusiastically to her application but informed her that he had just accepted a curatorial position at the American Museum of Natural History in New York. His suggestion that she apply to AMNH for a postdoctoral fellowship was met with great excitement by Adriana. The Academy of Natural Sciences is an excellent institution, but the AMNH is one of the top research centers in the world in the field of systematics, her particular speciality.

So keen was she to work at AMNH that, in addition to the fellowship for which Dr. Schaefer suggested she apply, Adriana applied for three additional fellowships, all based at AMNH. To her delight, she was accepted for a one-year AMNH postdoctoral position that started in November 1997. Her project was "The Systematics of Hypoptopoma", which allowed her to continue her research on the same group of catfishes she had studied in Argentina. The distribution of these catfishes is limited to South America, including the Amazon, Orinoco, and Paraguay river basins. In order to study her group of fishes, Adriana had to contact many people in several countries, as well as institutions in the United States, Europe and South America. She also had to examine many specimens. Since the 1800s, material collected during scientific expeditions in the areas where Hypoptopoma is found, was deposited in museums all over the world. Instead of going to the Amazon to collect her own fish specimens, Adriana examined specimens in museum collections, many of them excellent. It would have been exciting had she been able to collect her own specimens, but to do so would have required more money, time, and logistical expertise than she had.

So productive was Adriana's experience of working at AMNH that once her fellowship expired in 1998, she applied succesfully for a two-year fellowship from the Government of Argentina that allowed her to continue working with Dr. Schaefer, improving her research skills, and build on her year's work. Since beginnings of 2001 -- besides going on with his fish research -- Adriana is now working as a curriculum/content specialist in the AMNH Department of Education, having as ultimate goal enhancing the connection between scientists and science teachers.