While researching bacteria found in blood-feeding leeches, Associate Curator Susan Perkins and Curator Mark Siddall have conducted fieldwork around the world, from French Guiana to South Africa.
But one of their most exciting discoveries took place in a Museum lab 10 years ago. DNA sequencing revealed that the symbiotic bacteria in turtle leeches belong to a group of bacteria that were previously found only in plants or as pathogens. As leeches have evolved and diversified, they’ve forged unique partnerships with bacteria at least three different times.
Dr. Perkins and Dr. Siddall confirmed they had sequenced the correct DNA using a technique called fluorescence in situ hybridization, or FISH. This method involves applying fluorescent DNA probes to thin slices of tissue that light up in the case of a DNA match. FISH also showed that symbiotic bacteria were present in young leeches that had never fed on blood, “suggesting the leeches pass the bacteria directly to their offspring,” explains Siddall. Images of glowing bacterial populations in leeches can be seen as part of Picturing Science: Museum Scientists and Imaging Technologies, curated by Siddall and now on view in the Akeley Gallery. Read more »
The New York State Department of Education has selected the American Museum of Natural History to launch a pioneering Master of Arts in Teaching (MAT) program this fall.
“The Museum is proud to be the first museum in the United States to offer a master’s degree program to prepare science teachers,” said Ellen V. Futter, President of the American Museum of Natural History. “The Museum’s new Master of Arts in Teaching program extends the Museum’s formal roles both in improving the teaching of science and addressing the national crisis in science education, and will be an important new component of the Museum’s longstanding graduate training, including, most notably, the Richard Gilder Graduate School, the only museum-based Ph.D.-granting program in the country.”
Drawing on the Museum’s unique resources and long history in teacher professional development, the 15-month MAT program is being launched as part of a specialized pilot program to help address a critical shortage of qualified science teachers in New York State, particularly in high-needs schools, by offering coursework with a specialization in Earth science for teachers of grades 7 through 12. The MAT program, which is supported by funding provided in part by the New York State Education Department and the National Science Foundation, will model and test new approaches that can be replicated across New York State and nationally.
The Museum will conduct the program in partnership with six schools—Murry Bergtraum High School for Business Careers in Manhattan; the Queens Vocational and Technical High School in Queens; the Thomas C. Giordano Middle School in the Bronx; Roosevelt High School and Gorton High School in Yonkers; and Freeport High School in Freeport, Long Island—with diverse student populations that include English Language Learners and students with special needs. Candidates in the MAT program will spend a full academic year in a partner school and will receive mentoring from experienced science teachers. In a feature unique to the Museum’s program, degree candidates will also spend two summers paired with Museum scientists and educators, one summer in programs for youth and one summer in a science practicum residency. Read more »
Smaug gigantus is a newly-reclassified giant girdled lizard from South Africa. Photo courtesy of E. Stanley.
The villain of J. R. R.Tolkien’s The Hobbit–the fearsome dragon Smaug–dwells deep in a cavern with a massive hoard of treasure and terrorizes nearby villages.
His real-world namesakes aren’t quite as fearsome. Smaug is the new name given to a genus of girdled lizards from South Africa by Ed Stanley, a doctoral candidate at the Richard Gilder Graduate School at the American Museum of Natural History, who reclassified the genus in a in a paper published in Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution in January 2011. Stanley’s work is funded in part by the National Science Foundation.
Smaug lizards live in tunnels in the highlands, including the appropriately named Drakensberg (Dragon Mountain) mountain range of southern Africa. But the inspiration for the name came from a connection to the author rather than the fictional character. “Tolkien was born in the Free State, South Africa, where this lizard was found,” says Stanley.
Though much smaller than the massive fire-breathing dragon of Tolkien’s tale, the real-world reptile bears thick scales of armor on its backs and has a weak underbelly that is vulnerable to predators, much like its novelistic namesake. Read more »
The Museum has a long tradition of exploration, and fieldwork is a core component of the Museum’s research and collection development activities. The Museum sends out approximately 120 field expeditions each year and offers students in the Richard Gilder Graduate School the opportunity to participate in expeditions as part of their training.
For an extraordinary group of New York City students, going to class means passing a Neanderthal skeleton, a 94-foot-long model of a blue whale, and a family of brown bears — and that’s just on the first floor.
These are the 13 students now enrolled in the Richard Gilder Graduate School at the American Museum of Natural History, which in 2006 became the only American museum—and the first museum in the Western Hemisphere—with the authority to grant the Ph.D. degree. In 2008, the Museum made history by enrolling its first class. Just last year, the New York State Board of Regents granted full institutional accreditation to the Richard Gilder Graduate School, a landmark decision that recognized the strength of the new program and the Museum’s long track record of training graduate students in partnership with leading institutions that include Columbia University, New York University, Cornell University, City University of New York, and Stony Brook University.
The Museum’s inaugural doctoral program is in comparative biology, with an interdisciplinary emphasis spanning the origins, history, and diversity of life on Earth. Here, the RichardGilder Graduate School students—who come to study from all over the world—have several distinct advantages. The Museum’s internationally recognized staff of curators and other scientists are their faculty. The Museum’s world-renowned collections of more than 32 million specimens and cultural artifacts are available for their research projects. The Museum’s active field work program offers students the opportunity to conduct research all over the globe. And some of the most advanced, state-of-the-art scientific facilities in the world are available on site at the Museum. Read more »
