Marine turtle research on the Pacific coast of Costa Rica.

The Museum's Department of Ichthyology houses over two million individual fish specimens in varying conditions and containers, and of several preparation types, including fluid specimens, dry skeletons, and cleared and stained specimens. Xenia is fully involved in the curation of, or caring for, these specimens. Curation is an essential museum discipline. It is how museums ensure that collected specimens - of any species - are preserved in perpetuity. This may involve adding more alcohol to a jar containing a specimen; transferring skeletal materials from old cardboard containers to modern acid-free boxes; or updating the collection data on labels (e.g., to reflect the change in the name of a country).

During one routine curation of fluid (or wet) specimens, Xenia's attention was grabbed by a long-neglected section of the collections. Xenia was amazed to find jars that contained thousands of tiny specimens of larval fishes belonging to hundreds of species. Most of these miniscule creatures had been collected in the Hudson River and the marine waters of the southeast United States.

Many - but by no means all - fishes pass through a larval stage in which they lack scales entirely. Adulthood is attained when the fish is covered in scales. The larvae are tiny: the larger ones are 40 mm long, but the smallest are miniscule, at half a millimeter in length.