Podcast: 10th Annual Isaac Asimov Memorial Debate

Wednesday, March 17 4:16 pm

More than 900 people packed the American Museum of Natural History’s Samuel J. and Ethel LeFrak Theater on March 15 for the 10th annual Isaac Asimov Memorial Debate. This year, moderator Neil deGrasse Tyson, astrophysicist and Frederick P. Rose Director of the Hayden Planetarium, led a conversation about what the frontier of the manned space program should be, the Moon, Mars, or beyond?

Podcast: Download | RSS | iTunes (2 hr 6 mins, 115 MB)

The six preparing for the Tenth Asimov Debate at the American Museum of Natural History (l to r): Kenneth Ford, Robert Zubrin, Steven Squyres, Neil deGrasse Tyson, Paul Spudis, and Lester Lyles. Credit: R. Mickens/AMNH

Where to head next is one of the hottest topics for NASA’s manned program. Central to the subject are thorny issues that relate to science, launch hardware, international competition, national security, shrinking budgets, and political will. The Obama administration’s recent decision to delay indefinitely our next voyage to the Moon while simultaneously planning a new launch vehicle to take us out of low earth orbit made this Asimov Debate particularly topical and newsworthy. The debate also takes on special significance this year as part of a year-long celebration commemorating the 10th anniversary of the Frederick Phineas and Sandra Priest Rose Center for Earth and Space and the 75th anniversary of the opening of the Hayden Planetarium.

Answering these critical questions were Kenneth Ford of the Institute for Human and Machine Cognition, Lester Lyles (ret) of the United States Air Force, Paul Spudis of the Lunar and Planetary Institute, Steven Squyres of Cornell University, and Robert Zubrin, founder of the Mars Society. Apollo 11 astronaut Buzz Aldrin made a surprise appearance at the end of the conversation after having listened to the debate. His comments were followed by a question and answer session with audience members and reporters.

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Audubon Revisited in Masterful Prints

1:33 pm

The Canada Lynx, an Audubon watercolor, was among the paintings gifted to the Museum by the artists granddaughters in the early 20th century. Courtesy of Joel Oppenheimer Gallery

Treasures abound in the American Museum of Natural History, from its famous dino­saur fossils to the Star of India sapphire and oth­er dazzling finds in the Halls of Minerals and Gems. As for fine art, the exquisite landscapes of the habitat dioramas are there for all to see.

But visitors may be surprised to learn that the Museum’s collections include more than 2,500 original works by some of the greatest natural history artists of their time, including such iconic painters as John James Audubon, Louis Agassiz Fuertes, Francis Lee Jaques, Titian Ramsay Peale, and Joseph Wolf.

Two years ago, the Museum put on view more than 50 original oil paintings, water­colors, and hand-colored stone lithographs in the exhibition The Unknown Audubons: Mam­mals of North America—so named because Audubon is best known for painting birds. The mammals appeared in the naturalist’s last great work, The Viviparous Quadrupeds of North America, which was completed with the help of his two sons, John Woodhouse Audubon and Vic­tor Gifford Audubon, and their father-in-law, the Reverend John Bachman. Early in the last century, many of the origi­nal paintings were gifted to the Museum by Audubon’s granddaughters, Florence and Maria R. Audubon.

Now, through a special collaboration with Joel Oppen­heimer Gallery, full-size, fine-art prints of 14 of these rare mammal paintings, plus a portrait of Audubon painted by his son John, will be made available in limited editions. Oppenheimer, which has similar partnerships with New-York Historical Society and The Field Museum in Chicago, reproduces original works using ultra-high resolution digital imaging that takes into ac­count the fragility and light-sensitivity of the works being captured. Some of the original paintings have penciled notes by the artist to the printmaker that would not have appeared in subsequent published lithographs but are faithfully reproduced in these prints. Read more »

Mexican Cave Scorpions Put a Dent in Dollo's Law

Monday, March 15 10:26 am

Typhochactas mitchelli is among the smallest known scorpions and part of the Typhlochactidae family of cave scorpions, endemic to Mexico. Like all scorpions, it fluoresces in long-wave ultraviolet light as this image of its ventral side highlights. Credit: V. Vignoli

Blind scorpions that live in the stygian depths of caves are throwing light on a long-held assumption, showing that specialized adaptations aren’t always an evolutionary dead-end. Looking at the phylogenetic relationships among species of the scorpion family Typhlochactidae, endemic to Mexico, Associate Curator Lorenzo Prendini and colleagues found that species currently living closer to the surface (under stones and in leaf litter) evolved independently on more than one occasion from specialized deep-cave ancestors adapted to life further below the surface (in caves). This finding puts a dent in both Cope’s Law of the unspecialized, which assumes that novel evolutionary traits tend to originate from a generalized member of an ancestral taxon, and Dollo’s Law of evolutionary irreversibility, which theorizes that specialized evolutionary traits are unlikely to reverse.

Scorpions are predatory, venomous, nocturnal arachnids related to spiders, mites, and other arthropods. About 2,000 species are distributed throughout the world, but only 23 species found in ten different families are adapted to a permanent life in caves. One of these families is the Typhlochactidae, comprising four genera and nine species.

“Scorpions have been around for 450 million years, and their biology is obviously flexible,” says Prendini. “This unique group of eyeless Mexican scorpions may have started re-colonizing niches closer to the surface from the deep caves of Mexico after their surface-living ancestors were wiped out by the nearby Chicxuluxb impact along with non-avian dinosaurs, ammonites, and other species.”

Alacran tartarus, also in the family Typhlochactidae, has been found at the greatest depth of all scorpions, at 750 to 920 meters below the surface in the Sistema Huautla, Oaxaca, Mexico. Credit: P. Sprouse and A. Gluesenkamp

Biodiversity at AMNH: Become a Bee Watcher This Spring

Thursday, March 11 5:00 pm

HONEY BEES Compared to bumble bees, honey bees are lanky and lean. They can be golden or dark brown. One distinguishing characteristic: hairy eyes. © John Ascher

The Museum’s Center for Biodiversity and Conservation (CBC), in collaboration with the New York City Department of Parks & Recreation, is looking for volunteer bee watchers in all five boroughs for its Great Pollinator Project this spring and summer. Now in its fourth year, the program is tracking the pollination patterns of five categories of New York City’s native bees— bumble bees, honey bees, green metallic bees, carpenter bees, and “others” for the rest —with a view to conserving and improving bee habitat and plant pollination.

“By having all those different eyes out there, we are able to collect a lot more data than we ever could ourselves,” says Liz Johnson, CBC manager of the Metropolitan Biodiversity Program, who works on the Great Pollinator Project with Ed Toth, director of the Department of Parks & Recreation’s Greenbelt Native Plant Center (GNPC), and Kevin Matteson, an urban ecologist at Fordham University.

Would-be New York City bee watchers are asked to complete a brief orientation, transplant an annual sunflower and six native plants to a sunny location, and watch for bees for half an hour at least once every two weeks, then submit their observations online. If a volunteer doesn’t have a suitable outdoor spot for the plants, they are encouraged to visit public gardens or parks and record observations there. Researchers are interested in how frequently bees visit specific flowers to determine what plants and habitats best support the healthy bee populations so vital to pollination—a process without which wild and garden plants might produce small or less fertile seeds or no seeds at all, with serious implications for the ecosystem.

“Ninety percent of plants require an animal pollinator, and bees are the primary pollinator in the Northeast,” says Johnson. “Different bee species have unique adaptations specifically for carrying pollen. Butterflies, wasps, flies, and beetles also pollinate, but they are generally considered less efficient at moving pollen around.”

Aside from enlisting citizen scientists to track and map bee patterns across the city, another goal of the project is to increase public awareness of bees.

“When you talk of bees, people think of the honey bee and maybe the bumble bee,” says Johnson. “But over the years, Museum scientists have documented more than 225 species of bees in the five boroughs.”

To find out more about becoming a bee watcher, visit the Great Pollinator Project or email beewatchers@gmail.com.

A version of this story appears in the March/April issue of Rotunda.

CARPENTER BEES These huge bees have no stripes, like this Xylocopa virginica spotted in Queens’ Jamaica Bay Wildlife Refuge. © John Ascher	GREEN METALLIC BEES This category includes all green bees, such as those with green heads and black abdomens or green heads and striped abdomens, like this female Agapostemon virescens. © John Ascher
AND MORE Other bees buzzing around New York City include leaf-cutter bees, wool carder bees, and giant Asian resin bees like the one above, snapped at the Brooklyn Botanic Gardens. © John Ascher	BUBMLE BEES Large and fuzzy, Bombus species can be distinguished by their banding patterns. This male Bombus perplexus was photographed last summer in Brooklyn’s Prospect Park. © John Ascher

Return of the Reptiles, Lizards & Snakes Alive

9:09 am

The real monsters, dragons, and basilisks are back! More than 60 live lizards and snakes from five continents are now displayed in exquisitely prepared habitats. In addition to the live animals, the exhibit uses interactive stations, significant fossils, and an award-winning video to acquaint visitors with the world of the Squamata, the group that includes lizards and snakes.

In Lizards & Snakes: Alive! visitors will see representatives of 26 species, including crowd favorites such as the Gila Monster, Eastern Water Dragon, Green Basilisk, Veiled Chameleon, Blue-tongued Skink, Rhinoceros Iguana, Eastern Green Mamba, and a fourteen-foot Burmese Python. The Water Monitor habitat is equipped with a web camera, enabling virtual visitors from around the globe to observe the daily behavior of one of the largest living species of lizard on earth.

Join Darrel Frost, curator of Lizards & Snakes: Alive!, as he walks through the exhibit and describes some of the fascinating traits these creatures possess.

The exhibit is now open and runs through September 6 at the American Museum of Natural History.