Where in the world? Mapping the South Pacific’s bird life

A dead bird on its own and without any accompanying data is simply a dead bird. But add some info on where and when it was collected and that dead bird becomes a specimen. The Museum’s collections - full of 33 million specimens and artifacts is the backbone of our research. They allow researchers to look back in time and peer into the biodiversity and societies that are either no more or are quite different than what they once were.

Even though our biodiversity specimens are quite dead, the collections aren’t static and take a considerable amount of attention to be continually useful and relevant. Take for example the simple idea of location. Today, each of you has a super accurate GPS device in your pocket (e.g. your cell phone) nefariously tracking your every movement with the precision of a few feet. Back in the early 00’s, I had to buy a special GPS device to do my research and it often didn’t work in a dense forest. Way back in the day - turn of the of the 20th century - researchers and collectors had to rely on maps. In some cases, they had to make their own. As to be expected, early AMNH explorers were a little more vague (aka less precise) about recording where things were collected. Sometimes they listed only a country or island name. Consider the bird research being conducted by Josh and Jannatul or Nafilah & Desiree How could they investigate questions of speciation across islands or geographic variation in a species when all they had for location was the country of origin. Not super helpful.

Rolo Beck preparing a specimen

However, what early explorers lacked in technology they made up for in amazingly detailed journals: what bay they docked in, how deep into the forest they hiked, and what they collected.  In the 1920’s, the AMNH initiated a multiyear expedition to the South Pacific, known as the Whitney South Seas Expedition. Anna and Charlie - lead by Ornithology Collection Manager Paul Sweet - are plumbing the depths of the journals written by the crew members of this expedition. They are comparing the journals of Rollo H. Beck and Jose G. Correia and the log book of the expedition’s ship, the France, to generate detailed locality data for the leg of the expedition in Vanuatu. In addition, they are working with the actual specimens collected on the expedition to standardize and complete taxonomic names. The result will be a vastly improved database from which stunning visualizations of the South Pacific’s biodiversity will be generated using the mapping software, CARTO. Check out the results of last year's SRMP team.