After Darwin: Scientist Slide Shows Bring the Field to the Web

Monday, October 04 11:14 am

After returning from his voyage aboard H.M.S. Beagle, it took Charles Darwin three years to publish an account, Journal and Remarks, which later became known as The Voyage of the Beagle. But in today’s information age, readers can sometimes have a real-time window into a scientific expedition when researchers use the internet and satellites to relay their experience from remote corners of the Earth.

Earlier this year, Christopher Raxworthy, curator in the Department of Herpetology, inaugurated a new blog from The New York Times called “Scientist At Work: Notes from the Field.” And now — just a few months after his return from Northern Madagascar — you can hear Dr. Raxworthy talk about the expedition against a backdrop of stunning images.  The National Science Foundation created this audio slide show and funded the field research discussed.

Bronx Student Snaps Up Young Naturalist Award

Tuesday, August 24 10:46 am

2010 Young Naturalist Award winner Erik Z. studied snapping turtles in the Bronx, collecting data on more than 200 turtles. Courtesy of Erik Z.

How many snapping turtles do you think you can find in the Bronx?

Last year, Erik Z., then a rising senior at New York’s Bronx High School of Science, launched a research project to find out how these large and magnificent animals manage to survive in New York City. Erik, who has always been fascinated by reptiles, also wondered if turtle populations differed depending on their proximity to humans. His study eventually led him to capture, collect data on, and release 225 snapping turtles — and to win one of this year’s Young Naturalist Awards.

For his award-winning study, Erik first identified four very different turtle habitats throughout the Bronx. Some habitats were in more developed areas while others were farther from human activity. He then set out to capture and collect data on snapping turtles at each location, carefully weighing and identifying the sex of each animal in addition to marking the carapace of each turtle he caught before releasing them.

Erik’s analysis of the data showed that the population of turtles in each location was distinct and that the sex ratio differed widely depending on turtles’ proximity to humans. (To find out why, and to read about the 12 other winners from 2010, visit the Young Naturalist Awards website.)

Erik’s essay, Investigating the Ecology of Chelydra s. serpentine, the Common Snapping Turtle in a Highly Urban Setting, was of such caliber that Christopher Raxworthy, associate curator in the Museum’s Department of Herpetology, said, “With a little extra work, this could be published in a scientific journal.”

Erik plans to pursue research as an undergraduate. This fall, he entered the renowned herpetology program at the University of Kansas.

The Young Naturalist Awards is a nationwide, science-based research contest for students in grades 7 through 12 presented by the Museum. Since 2006, the program has been made possible through the exceptional generosity of Alcoa Foundation as part of its commitment to supporting student achievement in the science, technology, engineering, and mathematics disciplines.

To learn more about the Young Naturalist Awards, visit amnh.org/yna.

Eleanor Sterling Blogs for The New York Times from Palmyra Atoll National Wildlife Refuge

Thursday, July 29 3:28 pm

Eleanor Sterling, director of the Museum’s Center for Biodiversity and Conservation, began blogging this week for The New York Times from the pristine Palmyra Atoll National Wildlife Refuge in the Pacific, where she and six Museum colleagues are studying the green and hawksbill sea turtles. This is the conservation biologist’s second stint with the new feature“Scientist At Work: Notes from the Field,” which was inaugurated in April by Christopher Raxworthy, curator in the Museum’s Department of Herpetology, with vivid accounts of his search for chameleons, frogs, and lizards in Madagascar. Sterling previously reported from the rainforests of Vietnam where she was part of a team surveying one of the last remaining populations of the gray-shanked douc langurs in the wild.

The Palmyra Atoll National Wildlife Refuge is a unique environment relatively free from human influence. “We are smack in the middle of nowhere, just above the equator in the Pacific — about a thousand miles south of Hawaii,” Sterling wrote in her post to set the scene. “The total human population on the atoll varies month to month because it consists entirely of refuge managers, researchers and the research station crew. This two-week period we have 17 on the atoll.”

Sterling and her team are trying to understand the importance of the remote, uninhabited atoll as a foraging, as opposed to a nesting, site for turtles migrating across the Pacific Ocean. Now readers can peek over the scientists’ shoulders for the next few weeks.

Credit: F. Arengo

Christopher Raxworthy Blogs for the New York Times

Thursday, May 06 4:48 pm

Credit: D. Finnin

Christopher Raxworthy, curator in the Department of Herpetology at the American Museum of Natural History, has been to Madagascar more than 30 times to conduct field research on this island nation’s chameleons, frogs, and lizards. Now you can follow him to the summit of Mt. Marojejy as he climbs through tropical rainforests, bamboo thickets, and low-lying scrub to camp at nearly 7,000 feet. For the next few weeks, Raxworthy’s thoughts, discoveries, and photographs will be posted as the inaugural blog for The New York Times’s Scientist At Work: Notes from the Field.

“We are delighted that this new blog brings the process of science to countless readers. This highlights yet another way that Museum scientists and educators are using digital technologies to share new thinking and approaches to scientific discovery and learning with the public,” says Ellen V. Futter, President of the Museum. “Scientific research is at the heart of this institution, and that research hinges on the weeks and months that our curators, like Chris Raxworthy, spend in the field.”

“Time now for the editor to step back and let the scientist start talking,” writes The New York Times Deputy Science Editor James Gorman. “Dr. Raxworthy says the best part of each visit to Madagascar is the first night in the forest, because it is such hard work to get there, and you never know what you will find…”

We recently caught up with Raxworthy as he prepared to head back out to Madagacar. Watch as he discusses the importance of his studies and what it is like traveling around the island nation.

Chris Raxworthy Finds Chameleons in Madagascar

Friday, March 05 4:48 pm

With Madagascar containing nearly two-third’s of the world’s chameleon species, Christopher Raxworthy, Associate Curator of Herpetology at the American Museum of Natural History, recently embarked on an expedition to the island in search of these special lizards. His hope was to track down the lined-chameleon in order to further study speciation on Madagascar.

Having recently returned from Madagascar, Raxworthy brought back video footage of his research trip to give everyone a glimpse into his studies and what life is like for scientists in the field, including camping in remote villages, searching for specimens in the jungle and traversing the varied island landscape.

Raxworthy first visited Madagascar in 1985 and has returned most years since, making this recent trip upwards of 20 expeditions to the Indian Ocean island — the fourth-largest island in the world.

While Raxworthy’s recent findings must remain in Madagascar until the end of this current collection season, once he has the chameleon specimens at the Museum his work to classify and study the DNA will begin.