Systematics of Florida short-tailed shrews
Natural history specimens have frequently revealed cryptic (or hidden) species within their cabinets. When species are hard to catch, endangered, or maybe even extinct from where they were first discovered, we can use historical specimens to look for clues as to their relationships to other, closely related species. We are currently doing this now with a Florida endemic species, Sherman’s short-tailed shrew, which hasn’t been seen since the 1950s. We are using lab techniques to better understand its relationship to other nearby shrews.
Caribbean Niche Modeling
Ecological niche models are routinely used to not only generate predicted distributions for species at the present time, but they are also used to generate past species distributions (e.g., those at the last glacial maximum). There has been a disturbing absence of testing to determine the degree to which these models accurately predict the past distribution of species. We are using the bat species of the Bahamas as a test case whereby we are generating predictive models of species distribution using various methods and testing their accuracy based on the fossil record of bats from the Caribbean. This study involves considerable field collection, computational effort (niche modeling), and molecular data analysis (to define taxonomic boundaries for niche modeling).
Florida Panther Research
The Florida Museum receives all of the Florida Panthers that are found dead from various causes (e.g., hit by cars, male/male aggression, etc.). Therefore, we have an amazing resources of over 100 FL Panther specimens that we can use to address various questions about diet and health. We have examined the osteopathologies that these cats suffer from (likely the result of severe inbreeding) to track changes in severity and prevalence over the past 50 years. We have also used stable isotope geochemistry to examine panther diet, which seems to vary in ways that we didn’t expect. This work has been submitted to the Florida Museum of Natural History Bulletin. Check the web site in the summer of 2007 to find this work.
Population Genetics of the Florida Mouse
The Florida Museum of Natural History has an outstanding collection of the monotypic Florida Mouse thanks to the collecting efforts of Jim Layne and others. We will be looking at the population genetics of the historical populations sampled from within our collection, and our collaborator, James Austin, will be sampling current populations for comparison.