Class of 2016

Life Science

Paul Velazco, Paleontology

Keywords: Bioinformatics, Evolutionary Biology, Systematics, Taxonomy

Project: In 2013 an international team assembled and analyzed the largest character data set (over 30 genes and 4,500 morphological characters) yet for deciphering the relationships among the major living and fossil mammalian groups. One of the main results of this study was the finding that the radiation of the placentals occurred some 65 million years ago, immediately after the Cretaceous mass extinction event that wiped out the dinosaurs. We are currently continuing to test and refine these results by adding more fossils to the dataset. We are focusing on Mesozoic fossil groups that are well represented by skeletal features, including new taxa discovered in our Mongolian Gobi Desert expeditions. We invite SRMP students to work with us in adding new and important information in terms of morphological characters and fossil taxa and contributing to the analysis in an effort to further resolve the mammalian tree of life. The SRMP students will work directly with fossils by taking high-resolution pictures, measuring, producing CT reconstructions, and scoring this fossil in an online platform (www.morphobank.org). At the end of the program, the SRMP students will analyze the dataset and generate a phylogenetic tree that will show where the fossil taxa they score falls in the mammal tree of life.

Check out these site for more:

Bio: I am a Peruvian biologist interested in studying the evolution and diversification of mammals, with a special focus on bats and Mesozoic mammals. For my research I often use molecular and morphological techniques to reconstruct the phylogenetic relationships, evolution of morphological characteristics and biogeographic history. I love to go the field, especially the Amazon, and collect bats during the night. It is really amazing the different kinds of bats that are out there. On any given night, I can collect more than 30 different species. Likewise I am interested in studying the diversity of mammals from the past, specifically the ones that occurred in the Mesozoic (time when mammals and dinosaurs lived together).

Shivam

Katherine

Paul Sweet, Ornithology

Keywords: Bioinformatics, Conservation, Ecology, Evolutionary Biology, Taxonomy

Project: How can we use museum specimens and archival data to produce a historic snapshot of bird diversity and map the expeditions of early 20th century scientists? Learn how to be a biological specimen detective and produce online data visualizations. The AMNH Whitney South Seas Expedition spent a dozen years from 1920 to 1932 travelling around the Pacific collecting some 40,000 bird specimens from over 600 islands, the longest ornithological voyage in history. Although these specimens are critical to our understanding of the biodiversity of the region almost none of them have associated geographic coordinates. We will work to discover geographic information for the bird specimens collected on this expedition. We will examine bird specimens and their original labels; consult the hand-written catalogs and the unpublished field journals, as well as various online and published sources. This hands-on research work will generate data that can be used not only by the students to learn GIS applications, but will also be archived in our database and be available to all researchers with an interest in the Pacific. Once we have obtained our georeferenced locality data we will work with colleagues from Vizzuality, a Brooklyn based digital mapping group, who will guide us in the use of their CartoDB mapping program. We will learn how to visualize our data to generate an engaging and informative digital map showing the WSSE route with links to specimen records and historic photographs.

Bio: I grew up in England and have been fascinated by natural history for as long as I can remember. I have always collected specimens and as a child even had a museum in my bedroom, so working in the bird collections at the AMNH is a dream job. I studied Zoology at university and have been working in the Ornithology Department for 25 years. Every day I am amazed by the vast collections that I manage and overwhelmed by the daunting task of caring for these treasures.

Hannan

Julian

Anthony Caragiulo, Sackler Institute for Comparative Genomics

Keywords: Genetics and Genomics, Ecology, Evolutionary Biology

Project: The millipede Boraria stricta inhabits the southern Appalachian region and has a northernmost range extending into Virginia. This species has recently been observed in New York within the Mianus River Gorge Preserve (MRGP), approximately 700 km north-northeast of its native range. The B. stricta specimens present in the MRGP were identified solely upon morphological characteristics, and my 2013 SRMP students used molecular techniques to confirm this identification. The molecular confirmation left many questions unanswered pertaining to B. stricta’s genetic diversity, potential modes of dispersal, and time since introduction into the MRGP. My 2014 SRMP students molecularly analyzed B. stricta individuals from 9 more localities in the MRGP and found very little genetic diversity, leading to the hypothesis of a single introduction. This year’s SRMP students will focus on searching for new gene regions to further investigate the genetic diversity within the MRGP, in addition to analyzing B. stricta individuals found outside the MRGP and from their native Appalachian range. The main focus of this next phase is to source the MRGP individuals back to a part of their native range using B. stricta samples from these areas. Students will gain experience with DNA extraction techniques, polymerase chain reaction, DNA sequencing and sequencing analysis, and learn basic analytical tools to characterize populations of organisms.
Project website: https://borariablitz.wordpress.com/
Project Twitter handle: @BorariaBlitz

Bio: I am a post-doctoral scientist with the Sackler Institute for Comparative Genomics at AMNH and my main interests are conservation genetics and population genetics of organisms. I spend most of my time researching large carnivores (i.e. pumas, jaguars, snow leopards, tigers) using noninvasive techniques (i.e. scat, scent sprays, hair). I’m really interested in using new noninvasive methods for understanding how these carnivores use the landscape. I’m also interested in using genetics to answer ecological questions; such as (1) how long has an organism been in an area? (2) what’s their colonization pattern?

Mahir

Julian

Jessica McKay, Ornithology

Keywords: Conservation, Genetics & Genomics, Evolutionary Biology, Taxonomy, Systematics

Project: The Amazon rainforest is one of the most biodiverse regions in the world, and new species are still being discovered there today. In collaboration with national and international institutions, the ornithology lab has been studying biodiversity and its processes in the Amazon rainforest using DNA sequences, the museum’s collection of specimens, and geographic and environmental information.
Students working with me will study the conservation status of a family of fascinating and beautiful birds, the cotingas, which are found in the Amazon rainforest. They will use research and scientific papers along with conservation websites (IUCN, Conservation International, etc) to gather data on threats to the Amazon rainforest and these birds.

Students will then develop a project on one genus of cotingas (TBD). They will sequence DNA from fresh tissues, explore morphological variation using the ornithology department’s collection of skin specimens, and look at how geographical features in the Amazon basin may affect species’ distribution and diversity. Using their results and their study as a proxy, students will identify areas of the Amazon basin that deserve the most attention for conservation.

Bio: I studied Physical Anthropology in college, which introduced me to genetics and evolution. After working at a spine surgeon’s office, I interned at the Central Park Zoo as a zookeeper, which made me discover how much fun birds are, and how important conservation is. So, I went back to school and got my Master’s in Conservation Biology. My job here is to use bird DNA and physical attributes to understand how geographical features (mountains, rivers, islands) affect speciation, particularly in areas that might be threatened by deforestation and climate change. How different from one another are two populations that are separated by a huge river like the Amazon? Should those populations be considered different species? What does this mean for conservation efforts in the region?

Ethan

Mazie

Christopher Martinez, Ichthyology

Keywords: Ecology, Evolutionary Biology

Project: Students working with me will get to assist with research in a really interesting group of fish that come from the Congo River and other locations in Africa. These fish are in the genus Distichodus and they are diverse in their appearance (see figure 1). Other researchers here at the AMNH have recently used genetics to determine the diversity of species within this group. We will be working with these scientists to understand the variety of body shapes that have evolved in the genus Distichodus.

To do the research outlined above, we will be using a method of shape analysis called geometric morphometrics that lets us compare shapes of animals by using a bunch of points that define their forms (see figure 2). Don’t be scared by the name of the analysis, it is actually pretty easy and fun to do! Not only will this project involve really cool animals from remote locations in Africa, the students involved in this research will get to learn valuable methods that can be used in a lot of other types of biological studies.

Bio: I am a postdoctoral researcher in the Ichthyology department of the American Museum of Natural History (AMNH). In general, my research interests are on form and function in animals, mostly fish. I have worked in coral reefs, kelp forests and even in the coastal waters surrounding New York. My current work at the AMNH is on the evolution of body shape and jaw shape in a group of fish, called cichlids, which live in Madagascar and South Asia.

Please note, I am unable to mentor on Mondays.

Jacki

Jolie

Sara Oppenheim and Shaadi Mehr, Invertebrate Zoology & Sackler Institute for Comparative Genomics

Sara

Keywords: Bioinformatics, Ecology, Evolutionary Biology, Genetics & Genomics

Project: The evolution of plant-herbivore interactions in the Noctuidae, a family of moths that ranges in diet breadth from extreme generalists feeding on many plant orders to extreme specialists feeding on a few plant species in a single genus. Many noctuids are worldwide pests posing a serious threat to human agriculture, and identifying the genetic basis of their broad host plant ranges could lead to ecologically sustainable strategies for controlling them. Through a combination of field exploration, laboratory assays, and high throughput sequencing, we hope to address progress on two important questions:

Is host plant range evolution genetically conservative, such that the same genes are implicated across all taxa?
Are changes in host plant range correlated with changes in particular gene categories (digestion, detoxification, host plant detection, etc.)?

SRMP activities: These questions can only be answered with computational approaches to the analysis of DNA and RNA sequences. Students participating in this project can expect to learn the basics of command line computing, and build on this foundation to carry out bioinformatic analysis of sequences from different insect tissues and species. The goal of the project is to identify genomic regions that differ in sequence or expression between insects with different patterns of host plant use.

Students will experience: laboratory assays of caterpillar performance on different plant species (10%); molecular biology lab techniques (extraction and evaluation of RNA from various tissues) (10%); command line basics (UNIX and Perl) (40%); handling sequence data from raw reads to assembly (20%); analysis of genomic and transcriptomic data (20%); and, most importantly, how all these activities interact to allow us to use next generation sequencing to test hypotheses about how adaptive traits evolve.

Sara's Bio: I am interested in the interplay between diet breadth evolution and speciation in herbivorous insects. My postdoctoral research uses comparative genomics to examine plant-insect interactions in multiple species of heliothine moths with diverse host plant ranges. I am combining field work in South America with modern -omics work in the lab to address longstanding evolutionary questions about ecological adaptation and speciation. Before getting into the science game, I was a philosophy major in college and dreamed (foolishly) of a career in equestrian sports.

Julian

Bayleigh

Suzanne Macey, Center for Biodiversity and Conservation

Keywords: Conservation Biology, Ecology, Genetics and Genomics

Project: Bog turtles are one of the smallest turtles in the world and are rare, so finding them and doing detailed animal behavior studies on them is difficult. Some questions are just better answered in the lab. For example: Do female bog turtles mate with multiple males each year? Are some males more successful at finding mates than others? How many individuals in a population are reproductively active and adding to the next generation of turtles? How many eggs aren’t fertilized? Currently, scientists don’t know the answers to these questions, but your study will be the first step towards answering them. I have collected hundreds of bog turtle eggshells, and your study will be to help me develop a protocol to extract DNA from the eggshell membranes. With the DNA from the eggshells, we will be able to infer paternity and “crack open” the some mysteries of bog turtle reproduction ecology. Understanding the mating systems of the endangered bog turtle will help conservation managers better understand population dynamics and make better conservation decisions.

Bio: My name is Suzanne Macey and I just finished my Ph.D. at Fordham University studying the endangered bog turtle. I’ve been researching animals since I was 19 years old—sometimes travelling all over the world to study them. My projects often focus on the reproductive ecology of a species and use that information to help conservation efforts. What’s my favorite animal? I’m not that picky, but small, fat, and round animals make me giggle. Now, I’ve just started a new job in the museum’s Center for Biodiversity and Conservation working with a program that creates educational materials about conservation.

Ashara

Margaret

Bernardo Santos, Richard Gilder Graduate School @ AMNH

Keywords: Evolutionary Biology, Genetics and Genomics, Systematics, Taxonomy

Project: There is a great variety of cool projects to be developed with parasitic wasps; it was actually hard for me to choose just one project! My idea is that students will work on a mysterious group of wasps from the Andes mountains. The cryptine wasps from the genus Cryptopteryx were discovered and described back in 1900. Since then, they are all believed to be part of a single species, Cryptopteryx columbianus. However, field excursions in different sites of the Andes mountain range – Colombia, Venezuela, Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador – have unraveled an intriguing variety of color patterns and other characteristics in the group. It is still unclear if these represent different populations of the same species, or if they may be in fact several species that are still unknown to science.

Students will investigate this question using an integrative approach: mixing body shape measurements, examination of color patterns and DNA sequencing to find out if the variation we observe is consistent enough to separate these wasps into different species. There is great potential for publishing the results, and the suite of techniques used to address these questions – genetics, statistics, morphology - will be useful in the future for any sort of biology-related activities students decide to engage.

Bio: I am a Ph.D. student at the AMNH, working with evolutionary biology and biodiversity of an amazing group of insects, the parasitic wasps. These wasps have great ecological and economic importance, and are one of the most diverse groups of insects. I am interested in understanding their diversity worldwide, particularly in tropical regions, using evolutionary and ecological tools. That includes discovering and describing new species, comparing the diversity of different kinds of ecosystems and investigating the evolution of different characteristics. My work includes a lot of fieldwork and lab work, as well as assembling and organizing biological collections.

Andriy

Bayle

David Kizirian, Herpetology

Keywords: Evolutionary Biology, Systematics

Project: Phylogenetic analysis of Natricidae (e.g., Water Snakes) revealed that Hebius venningi samples do not cluster together, which suggests that there are multiple distantly related species under the name Hebius venningi. We will be looking at this group of poorly known snakes from Southeast Asia to see if it contains new species. First, we will look at morphological variation to identify possible new taxa. Then, we may sequence DNA to corroborate those findings.

Bio: I work mostly on systematics and evolution of lizards and snakes. This research is focused at the species level, so I’m also interested in models used to define units of diversity in general (What is a species?) and classification of species level diversity (How should we classify enormous diversity revealed by molecular data?). Most of my research has focused on Andean lizards but I also conduct biodiversity surveys in Vietnam. I have mentored more than fifty students and I also teach biology classes at various CUNY schools.

Please note, I am unable to mentor on Fridays.

Edwin

Joseph

J. Angel Soto-Centeno (Angelo), Mammalogy

Keywords: Bioinformatics, Conservation, Ecology, Evolutionary Biology, Genetics & Genomics, Systematics, Taxonomy

Project: Our lab in Mammalogy offers multiple research opportunities that span from climate change biology of mammals to paleontology and genetics. Our project for the SRMP program will assess if populations of Waterhouse’s leaf-nosed bats from the Caribbean are different than those from the continental North America. We will tackle this project by studying distributions of this species using ecological niche modeling and morphological analyses across their geographic range. The prospective SRMP student will be trained and involved in all aspects of this project. This will include species database management, literature search, and modeling and morphological analyses.

Scientific merit of the study:

Understanding connectivity among populations allows us to evaluate the ecological and evolutionary processes shaping their distributions and divergence. The ability of individuals to disperse between habitat patches in heterogeneous landscapes is important for assessing population divergence. Bats are of great interest because they can fly, and thus have dispersal abilities greater than those of most other small mammals. This characteristic offers a unique backdrop to study population divergence and how landscape heterogeneity may affect speciation in bats. We will use a modeling approach to study population connectivity in Waterhouse’s leaf-nosed bats. Using sophisticated modeling techniques and morphological analyses, we hope to be able to predict patterns and causes of divergence among populations in Caribbean Islands and mainland North America. The SRMP student will aid in the following research components: 1) the development of a database of bats by examining museum specimen records and literature accounts, 2) the development of climate and landscape models and morphological analyses, and 3) will assist in model comparison to assess whether climate helps maintain population divergence. The results of this research will be combined with a broader scale project examining speciation among island and mainland population of bats, and the processes that help maintain divergence among these populations.

Bio: My life-long fascination with flying animals motivated me to study biology and eventually become a bat biologist. My research program focuses on studying recent extinctions and I use climate models, genetic, and fossil data to understand how climate change affected bats in the Caribbean. These methods are very powerful and help us understand how past climate change affected island bats and make predictions of what may happen to these bats in the face of future climate change. Thus, theses studies have a strong application for conservation and can be applied to many different organisms to help preserve our world’s biodiversity. My job as a post-doctoral fellow in Mammalogy at AMNH allows me to combine my passion for working in the field with bats with collections, computer, and laboratory techniques.

Brianna

Cherena

Neil Duncan, Mammalogy & Mark Weckel, Science Research Mentoring Program

Neil Duncan

Keywords: Ecology, Conservation

Project : Instances of coyote sightings within the borders of New York City have received much media attention over the last year. It is no secret that coyotes will continue to move through the boroughs of NYC to eventually colonize Long Island.

This study is part of the larger Gotham Coyote Project. Gotham Coyote Project: About Our Project We will be determining the diet of coyotes in around New York City. Over 400 coyote scats have been located from various parts of New York City and just beyond its borders. We will identify prey remains from as many of these as can be done.

Neil's Bio: I am the Collections Manager for the Department of Mammalogy. I am responsible for the day to day operations of the department as well as implanting collections improvement projects. While the collections are an important part of my professional life I still seek opportunities on my own to answer ecological questions.

Before I came to the museum I worked in various parts of the country employed in different wildlife and fisheries jobs. One of my favorites was working as a biologist for the US Fish and Wildlife Service studying forest carnivores in Northern California. That is where I became interested in food webs and diet analysis studies. Since that time I have determined prey items from carnivores in over 3000 scats. I have been involved in diet studies of fishers, martens, fox and coyotes from localities around North America. I always feel somewhat like a detective when I conduct a diet analysis study. Every new prey item identified is a small puzzle piece of the bigger picture. Eventually, a clearer picture emerges of the day to day life of an elusive animal.

Please note, I am unable to mentor on Fridays. and I can not mentor after 5pm on Wednesdays.

Rachel

Rita

Sandra

Olivia

Georgina Cullman, Center for Biodiversity and Conservation

Keywords: Conservation, Cultural Anthropology

Project: Together with our partners, a group of CBC scientists are working with landholding communities in the Western Province, Solomon Islands to enhance the resilience of these communities in the face of never-before-seen changes (for example, climate change, population growth and market pressures). Changing diets and foodways (as in the cultural, historical, and economic aspects of how people eat) are a manifestation of how landholding communities in the Solomon Islands are strongly affected by these changes. In this region, as in much of the Pacific, individuals are choosing to supplement or substitute local foods such as fresh fish and root crops with store-bought foods such as rice, instant noodles, and sugary drinks. Changing diets mean changes in how people spend time in local land- and seascapes, and in local knowledge of food procurement, production, and processing. Western Province also suffers from a “double burden” of malnutrition – in a recent survey, 32.6% of children under five were characterized as chronically undernourished and a high percentage of adults (47.6% of women and 31.9% of men) were overweight or obese, and thus at heightened risk for noncommunicable diseases.

We are exploring the causes and consequences of changing diets and foodways: are individuals choosing store-bought food because of prestige, convenience, and/or novelty? Do individuals understand the nutritional qualities of local vs. processed foods? One way we will investigate these questions is through the use of a 24-hour dietary recall. In this widely-used method, researchers ask participants to recount all food and drink consumed in the previous day. The responses (meaning the food items listed) are then coded in different ways in order to assess the respondent’s dietary diversity. Dietary diversity is a good indicator of micronutrient adequacy in the diet. In addition to dietary diversity, we will assess how much diets are reliant on traditional foods like sweet potato and fish rather than store-bought foods like instant noodles and rice. In addition, we can glean other information from these data: they can be a proxy for how people spend their time, since the convenience of store-bought foods is often posited as a reason why people choose to eat rice and instant noodles and tinned fish rather than fresh fish and sweet potatoes and greens. Depending on how data collection proceeds (if repeat data collection occurs during the mentoring period), we may also use the data to evaluate how seasonality affects diets.

Students will help coding the data so we can analyze them together. Again, depending on how data collection proceeds, we may also analyze data on market trends and health problems at the national or regional level. I have two main aims for this mentorship: first, that students understand the wide-ranging issues that affect conservation and second, that the students learn about the reality of field-based research and how to assess research questions with often less-than-“perfect” data.

Greer

Destiny

Georgina's Bio: I am an interdisciplinary conservation scientist at the Museum’s Center for Biodiversity and Conservation (CBC); I do social and ecological research to answer questions that will make conservation efforts innovative, more locally appropriate, and more effective. I did my dissertation research in Madagascar where I explored how a new protected area was in harmony or in conflict with local values relating to land use. At the AMNH, I am exploring what it means to implement conservation using a biocultural approach. I was born and raised in New York City and love the adventure of working and learning in remote, rural locations as much as I love exploring the hidden corners of our diverse city. I feel very lucky to be able to do both!

Alex de Voogt, Anthropology:

Keywords: Cultural Anthropology

Project: In the last two centuries, at least twenty successful new writing systems were developed in sub-Saharan Africa. These look different from our alphabet and were designed by native speakers of the language for which they were designed. The designers had a wish to write their own language after finding out that European or neighboring languages already had a writing system. Much fewer examples are known outside of sub-Saharan Africa.

This activity of developing a (new) writing system for a language is what we will simulate in our project. In a series of experiments we ask people to make (parts of) a writing system for a particular language, usually their first or their second language. During the project you learn how to develop an experiment and how to do this effectively. You will learn about the permissions involved and the protocols that need to be prepared. I have conducted part of the experiment myself and tested about six people and this we will extend to about twenty people.

You will be working as a team (of two) and there are several topics within the data that we collect that you can choose to concentrate on. The works takes place in my office where we will also invite people to participate. In the first few months, we are mostly working on the preparation and on inviting the first couple of people. Later we will start analyzing the data that we collected while we keep inviting more people. In the end, we should have enough participants to make some statements on how writing systems are developed and what problems or complications the participants face when doing so. We can then explore how the insights we gained from this experiment can contribute to the existing literature on literacy, writing system development and cultural transmission.

Bio: I am the assistant curator for African Ethnology and I am interested in languages and writing systems. Next to research on language, I have a continued interest in board games and made descriptions of games all around the world. In games research I conducted experiments with masters of African games, similar to what has been done with chess masters in Europe. The same type of experiments I now conduct with people developing and using writing systems.

Alana

Daysi

Julia Zichello, Sackler Educational Laboratory for Comparative Genomics and Human Origins @ AMNH

Keywords: Bioinformatics, Evolutionary Biology, Genetics and Genomics, Systematics

Project: Genetic and Morphological Diversity of the European Starling (Sturnus vulgaris) in North America

European starlings (Sturnus vulgaris) have a historically well-documented arrival into North America. They were introduced into to New York in 1890. Starlings were part of an effort to populate Central Park with every bird featured in Shakespere’s plays. Sixty individuals were released in 1890, and another 40 in 1891. Since their arrival, starlings have spread rapidly, as far West as California, as far South as Mexico, and as far North as Alaska. Today, there are ~200 million starlings in North America.

This project will be the first to investigate mitochondrial (mtDNA) and morphological diversity of European starlings in North America. Estimating genetic diversity will allow us to understand basic population parameters of their dispersal, and allow us to directly compare European starlings in North America with their parent population in England. Starlings are an ideal model for investigating the impact of population size changes on genetic diversity.

New York is the location of the first introduced US starling population, which makes it the ideal location to begin an investigation of genetic diversity of these birds. Further, the story goes, the very first nesting pair of starlings was found in the eaves of the American Museum of Natural History. We will sequence several individuals from the New York area, and from populations throughout North America. We will also take standard morphological measurements from each specimen. This will allow us to better understand geographic distribution of genetic and phenotypic diversity and address fundamental evolutionary questions about how species change over time.

Click here to read more about my project

Bio: I am the Manager of the Sackler Educational Lab inside the Hall of Human Origins at the American Museum of Natural History. My educational background is in studying human and primate evolution. Specifically, I am interested in morphological and genetic diversity within species and how these two types of data mirror or contrast one another. Before I earned my PhD, I was a graphic designer. I made a big career switch because I fell in love with thinking about evolutionary patterns and biodiversity. And I found that there are a lot of similarities between art and science; both require keen observational skills, patience and creativity.

Currently, I am working on a new proFject investigating diversity in starlings; local birds that we see all over the lawn at the museum. I am thrilled to have the opportunity to work with SRMP students on this exciting project, and I am hopeful that our work will reveal novel and exciting results.

Kaira

Jensine

Rae Wynn-Grant; Center for Biodiversity and Conservation

Keywords: Conservation, Ecology

Project: I am conducting a large study on the impacts of human land use on carnivore ecology and human-carnivore conflict. This work focuses on the habitat selection and movement patterns of a population of black bears in the Lake Tahoe Basin of Nevada. Part of this work will be to ask “how do characteristics of the landscape influence risk of human-bear conflict?” To examine this, we will use a large database containing thousands of detailed accounts of black bear encounters by residents of Lake Tahoe. We will categorize these reports in terms of the type and magnitude of the conflict and the biological characteristics of the animals involved to look for patterns in the data and to determine what type of conflict is most prevalent in the region and which bears are most prone to conflict. We will then using Geographic Information Systems to map the locations of all of the conflicts and determine the landscape characteristics present at each location. Finally, we will combine both of these sets of information and use statistical modeling to explore trends in the data, including the probability that a certain location on the landscape has a high risk of human-bear conflict.This work is not only interesting for carnivore ecologists to learn more about how bears use their habitat, but also helps us to make recommendations for wildlife management. If we can determine that certain landscape features drive conflict with animals, policy makers in the Lake Tahoe Basin can better develop schemes to reduce conflict in these areas

Bio: My name is Rae Wynn-Grant and I just completed my PhD at Columbia University this past Spring. I am now a postdoctoral research fellow at AMNH and study large carnivore conservation and human-wildlife conflict. More specifically, I am interested in how large carnivores use resources in their habitats and the implications for human-carnivore coexistence. I conduct my research in the Lake Tahoe Basin in western Nevada. I grew up in California, so I enjoy getting back to the western part of the country. When I’m not focused on science, I enjoy traveling to beaches, exploring New York City, and finding the best tacos this side of California.

Amelia

Arielle

Richard Baker; Sackler Institute for Comparative Genomics

Keywords: Evolutionary Biology; Genetics & Genomics

Project: My project will involve examining the molecular evolution (i.e. the rate of change for specific proteins) and expression dynamics (i.e. identifying in what tissues and gender these proteins are turned on) of reproductive proteins in stalk-eyed flies. These flies are distinct because of the elongation of the head into long stalks, essentially producing extreme hammerhead flies. The males use the head as a weapon to fight rival males and as an ornament to attract mates. These flies have becomes a model system for studying mating systems and reproductive biology. In addition to male head shape, sperm has undergone rapid change in these flies including the evolution of killer sperm that attacks competing sperm. The most recent SRMP projects have examined the rate of protein evolution among novel genes that are important in sperm production and function. The research involves both lab work (PCR, sequencing and sometimes RNA work) and bioinformatics (collecting and organizing DNA sequences from outside databases).

Faraz

Paul Nascimbene; Invertebrate Zoology

Keywords: Ecology, Evolutionary Biology, Systematics; Taxonomy

Project: Fossil insects in ancient amber
The work involves the study of insect taxonomy, evolution, diversity and biogeography, as well as amber as a natural substance. Hands-on activities in the lab include screening, preparation and conservation of fossil inclusions in amber, with emphasis on learning how to embed amber in a high-grade epoxy under vacuum, dissolve amber to extract insects, databasing and photography of museum collections. While engaged in this work, the students have the opportunity to discover and identify various unusual and significant insects which help us reconstruct the paleoecology of ancient ecosystems.

Bio: Paleoentomological Research Assistant to David A. Grimaldi, Paul C. Nascimbene heads up the Fossil Insect Lab, and conducts research on ancient organisms preserved in amber and sedimentary rock. He also studies the botanical affinities, physicochemical characteristics and conservation of fossil tree resins – which harden over time into a natural plastic (amber). Paul has done fieldwork for the AMNH on Lower Eocene amber from India; Triassic amber from the Dolomite Mountains of northern Italy; Hell Creek amber from SD; Cretaceous amber from the Kaolak River of northern Alaska, and Cretaceous amber from NJ. He has also studied other Cretaceous deposits in Burma, Lebanon and Ethiopia. Paul is a past President of the New York Paleontological Society.

Sophie

Katherine

Claudia Wultsch; Sackler Institute for Comparative Genomics

Keywords: Conservation; Ecology; Genetics & Genomics

Project: Snow leopards are among the most elusive and least studied large mammals in the world. Similar to other big cats, snow leopards are threatened by habitat degradation, fragmentation, and human-wildlife conflict. Understanding factors that facilitate gene flow and movement of snow leopards across fragmented landscapes represents a conservation priority that aids long-term survival of this species. This study will apply a landscape genetics approach, which aims to assess landscape influences on snow leopard gene flow. The main goal of this project is to understand the dynamics of snow leopard movement by examining various landscape-genetic relationships. Hypotheses concerning how natural or human-altered landscape features and barriers influence snow leopard movement and genetic connectivity of wild populations will be tested. The information gained will contribute to ongoing and future conservation and management efforts being applied to reverse snow leopards’ declining population trend.

For more information, check out my twitter page: http://twitter.com/claudiawultsch

Bio: I am a postdoctoral research fellow in the Comparative Genomics department at the American Museum of Natural History. I have been working in the field of carnivore conservation studying various bear and cat species in the Americas, Europe, and Asia for over ten years. My current research addresses conservation and management related questions, examining the genetic status and connectivity of various threatened felid species, including jaguars, lions, leopards, and snow leopards existing across fragmented landscapes. I enjoy exploring newest research technologies in the field and laboratory to study these elusive species and gather valuable information, which ultimately improves conservation and management decisions.

And I love dogs!

Angie

Valerie

Brian Shearer, Anthropology

Keywords: Evolutionary Biology; Physical Anthropology; Systematics; Taxonomy

Project: This project will be an exploratory analysis of the primate vocal tract: the series of soft and hard tissue structures that allow different patterns of vocalization and types of of calls in monkeys and apes. We will be building on some preliminary research that investigated the howler monkey by widely expanding the taxa in our study in an effort to better understand how different primates use their vocal tracts to generate the broad diversity of calls found in living species today. We will be using a number of primate specimens that have been digitally scanned using either computed tomography (CT) or magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) in order to assess the soft tissues of the ears, nose, throat, and surrounding bony architecture. Students will receive training in the theory of surface and CT/MRI scans, will actively participate in rendering and segmentation of scans, will learn detailed human and comparative primate anatomy, and will be instructed on how to manipulate and manage large data sets. This project will help us better understand primate diversity, evolutionary history, and human anatomy in the context of the evolution of speech.

Bio: Hi! My name is Brian, and I'm a 5th year Ph.D student at the graduate Center of the City University of New York studying human and non- human primate evolution from multiple angles. Most of my research involves either fossils or the study of extant primates through comparative morphology. Recently I've been incorporating 3D scanning technology such as CT and MRI scanners to better understand the evolution of primates and the interaction between bones, muscles and other soft tissues, and a primate's behavior.

Personal website

Arianne

Michelle

Jackie Lacey, Anthropology

Keywords: Cultural Anthropology

Project: This year, I am inviting SRMP students to join in on a project I began in 2011 looking at the way plants and animals are utilized by people in North Sudan to make medicinal products. The practice of making medicines from animals based on traditional cultural and environmental knowledge is called zootherapy. My project is an investigation in which zootherapeutic practices are part of contemporary Sudanese Traditional Medicine and which practices may have their roots in practices we can learn about from archeological sites that might be hundreds or thousands of years old. The part of Sudan that I work in is an island in the middle of the Nile River, which is isolated from the cities and is an area where Western biomedical practices are less available. You can help me figure out how the knowledge of a place that people have developed over generations is paired with new knowledge gained by people in an ever-changing world to create belief systems and medical practices that contributes to peoples sense of health and well-being. I also explore the way zootherapy helps us to understand the way people and animals form relationships and how humans view animals as part of the natural world (and vice versa!)

I will be in North Sudan from late September until mid October completing more fieldwork on this project, so students will be coming into the project right as fresh findings are rolling in! You will learn how to record and interpret field notes, how to identify various plants and animals species based on photographs, field notes and samples and learn how to analyze various phenomena through a social science lens. You will also learn about the chemistry that might be underpinning why a group of people might, say, for example, be treating blurry vision with the urine of a hedgehog. This project sit at the intersection of public health, anthropology, and biology, so students with any interest in any of all are welcome!

Bio: Jacklyn Lacey is curatorial associate of African and Pacific Ethnology at the American Museum of Natural History. Her recent work is exploring the intersections of infectious disease epidemiology, medical anthropology and anthropocene studies. A webinar discussion organized by AAA on the anthropologists’ role in Ebola is available on YouTube. Her work at AMNH analyzes museum discourses on African culture and technology. She has a background in virology and medical anthropology, previously working in public health education in Tanzania, HIV/AIDS testing and research at African Services Committee in Harlem, and in Drew Cressman’s NSF-funded immunology lab at Sarah Lawrence College.

Ivanna

Saher

Noah Burg, Ornithology

Keywords: Ecology, Evolutionary Biology, Genetics & Genomics

Project: I study interspecific obligate brood parasitic birds. These are birds that reproduce exclusively by depositing their eggs in the nest of different species and get that species to incubate their eggs and rear their young. This is a form of parasitism, as it generally lowers the overall fitness of the hosts species as they labor to raise young that don't belong to them and are unrelated. This type of brood parasitism is thought to have evolved on possibly seven independent occasions across the avian tree of life. I focus my studies on understanding the evolutionary history of two lineages of avian brood parasites at very different time scales. In one project, I use a phylogeographic approach to look at brood parasitic finches, where I focus on investigating recent population history within a single species across the continent of Africa. In a second project, I look across a large group of brood parasitic cuckoos to reconstruct their phylogeny. Here I am interested in understanding the deeper evolutionary history of this group across multiple species and genera. I use a variety of methods to approach both of the above projects, primarily focusing my research efforts on molecular sequencing, but also including some morphological studies and species distribution modeling.

Bio: Noah Burg has been interested in science since childhood where he grew up on the site of a nature preserve and experienced various wild animals that temporarily resided in his bathtub at home, the most memorable of which was a juvenile great horned owl. He became interested in science education when presented with an opportunity to get involved with a National Science Foundation sponsored chemistry and biology peer teaching program as an undergraduate. This interest in teaching led directly to a job in the Education Department at the American Museum of Natural History coordinating research internships and teaching after school classes in biodiversity and biology. Noah continues to develop his early interest in birds through his graduate research. He is based at Hunter College and the American Museum of Natural History for his doctoral research in ornithology. His research focuses on host parasite coevolution in avian brood parasitism, avian phylogeography, biogeography, and systematics.

Kieran

Alexis

Physical Science

Or Graur, Astrophysics

Keywords: Observational Astrophysics

Project: We will follow up a paper by Martin Harwit from 1975, in which he quantified the observational capabilities of his day and speculated on the number of observable astrophysical phenomena. Students will comb through the webpages of all historical, existing, and planned observatories and tabulate their capabilities. The end result will be a complete picture of all observational capabilities with which we will determine whether new observatories that came online after 1975 significantly added to the number of known phenomena (i.e., how “efficient” they where) and what we might expect from the next generation of observatories. Students will benefit from this complete picture, as it will show them what opportunities for discovery they may have as future astrophysicists.

Bio: I am an observational astrophysicist at NYU and AMNH. I study what types of stars end up exploding as different types of supernovae. I do this by searching for supernovae using ground- and space-based telescopes (including the Hubble Space Telescope) and then using those supernovae in different experiments. For my PhD, I measured the rates of Type Ia supernovae, the kind of supernova used to measure distances to other galaxies. I also write fiction – mostly short stories – in both Hebrew and English. I've published one book so far, in Hebrew, called “The War Painter.”

Henry

Luca

Maria

Nathan Leigh, Astrophysics

Keywords: Theoretical Astrophysics

Project: This study relates to chaotic gravitational interactions between stars. These types of interactions occur commonly throughout the Universe, and are thought to be at the forefront of some of the most exciting puzzles of modern astronomy. To study these chaotic encounters, I use a computer program called FEWBODY, which performs simulations of gravitational interactions involving small numbers of stars (i.e. 3, 4, 5, etc.). The program is easy to use, and is ideal for research purposes on a modern laptop. A few example simulations can be viewed here (see the section called Stellar Encounters): http://faculty.wcas.northwestern.edu/aaron-geller/visuals.php

Surprisingly, a solution to the three-body problem in Newtonian gravity has eluded scientists for centuries. Thus, interactions involving 4, 5, 6, etc. objects have hardly ever been considered, let alone studied in detail. This leaves enormous potential for using FEWBODY to address a number of interesting astrophysical questions related to complex gravitational interactions involving stars, black holes, neutron stars, white dwarfs, etc. Specifically, the goal of this study is to develop an equation for the probability for any two stars to collide. For example, consider an encounter involving three Sun-like stars and one black hole. What is the probability that the black hole will collide with a Sun-like star? Using our derived equation, we will calculate a prediction for the likelihood of this event (let’s take p = 0.10 for the sake of our example). If we run many simulations of encounters between a black hole and three Sun-like stars, the black hole will consume a star in 10% of the simulations.

Bio: My name is Nathan Leigh, and I am a theoretical astrophysicist. I study gravity and its role in moving stars, clusters and galaxies in space and time. One such focus involves direct collisions between stars in dense environments, such as massive star clusters and galactic nuclei. I also study the dynamics of black holes, and make predictions for what astronomers should expect to find for their properties and numbers when performing observations of the cosmos.

Diana

Harsha

Yancey

Amanda White, Earth and Planetary Science

Amanda at the SOLAR-C telescope, Haleakalā, HI.

Keywords: Observational Astronomy

Project: Comets provide a peek at what the solids in the early solar system looked like. They formed at the same time as everything else in the solar system (sun, planets, asteroids, etc.), but unlike everything else, comets are mostly unaltered material. This makes comets the best place to look for the oldest and most primitive solids. As the "leftovers" of solar system formation, in a way, comets are analogous to taking something and putting it in your freezer for a few billion years.

In 2006, the NASA Stardust mission returned to Earth with a wealth of information about Comet Wild 2/81P in the form of grains captured in "tracks" within aerogel and impact craters in aluminum foils. Throughout the year we will be working with these precious samples.
Each track represents a unique impact event that occurred between cometary particles and the aerogel collector tray. Each has it's own story to tell about the history of Wild 2 and the early solar system. At AMNH, we are working to characterize as many tracks as possible by looking at track morphology, that is, the size and shape of the track. This is done by imaging tracks in 3D with a confocal microscope. For many tracks, X-ray fluorescence compositional data from a synchrotron has been obtained as a way to understand the chemistry of grains in the tracks. A new Raman spectrometer is currently being installed as a third way to characterize tracks.

We will be predominately working with confocal microscope data to characterize the size and shape of tracks that have been allocated by NASA to AMNH. We will also be looking at synchrotron data to describe the composition of tracks and finding the locations of interesting particles. As the Raman instrument comes online in the Winter, we will be adding that data to our characterizations for a fuller picture of tracks on hand. If a new track is allocated to AMNH, there will also be an opportunity to scan a track with the confocal microscope and work with a sample from start to finish.

Bio: Amanda White is the Confocal Microscopy Specialist at AMNH. She has been working at AMNH in the department of Earth and Planetary Sciences since 2011. Amanda uses several different types of instruments both in and outside of the museum to study tracks of comet material from the NASA Stardust mission. She has an interest in designing and using new instrumentation to push the edge of what science can do.

Gardner

Francesca

Mahira

Shalma

Celine Martin, Earth and Planetary Science

Keywords: Earth and Planetary Science

Project: Subduction zones are the places on Earth where an oceanic plate is going underneath another plate. They are like big scars on the crust, and represent the main interface to exchange material between the surface and the Earth interior. Noticeably, huge amount of water is dragged into the mantle and react chemically with it. This reaction products green rocks called serpentinites (because they look like the skin of a snake –“serpent” in French. Serpentinites are a key point of my current study, because they trapped the fluid that remains within the mantle after chemical reactions. The serpentinites are made of 3 minerals (antigorite, lizardite, chrysotile) that crystallize at different conditions of depth, but are indistinguishable with naked eye. The students will work with me on the icharacterization of serpentinites from Guatemala, using both the observation of thin sections of rocks with a microscope, and the characterization of samples with X-ray diffraction. More than 100 samples were collected last April in Guatemala by our team, and need to be sorted for further studies.

Bio: I am a French post-doc at AMNH since 2.5 years. I was always passionate by rocks and minerals, which I started to collection when I was a kid. I have now more than 2,000 species at home. Naturally, I wanted my passion to become my job, and I got my PhD in France, working on subduction zones (i.e. when a tectonic plate goes underneath another). After 2 years in Belgium, working on meteorites, I am working again on subduction zones here at the museum, and more particularly on the fluid-rock interactions that occurred during subduction.

Alexus

Caleb

Marc

Rondi Davies, Earth and Planetary Science

Keywords: Earth & Planetary Science

Project: Unraveling the tectonic history of high grade metamorphic rocks from New York City.

New York City is composed of high-grade metamorphic rocks that formed from sediments during tectonic events of the Taconic and Acadian orogenies about 450 million years ago. During subduction the sediments were forced to great depths under tremendous pressures and temperatures. They were later uplifted, thrust up, and metasomatized in a complex series of events. Though in the middle of a bustling metropolis, there is still a lot we have to learn about the rocks and the geology of this area.

To further refine the tectonic and metamorphic history of New York City this project will investigate metamorphic rocks through petrographic analysis, looking at mineral relationships and textures, electron microprobe analysis, and textural analysis software of thin sections. In addition, it will address models for metamorphism in open system and closed system conditions.

Video Bio

Julien

William

Yao