2002-2003 Research Summary
In the 2002-2003 fiscal year, the Florida Museum's world-class curators and collection managers brought in more than $2.2 million in new grants to support research, to care for the collections properly and to educate the University of Florida's undergraduate and graduate students and the public.
Collections & Research Highlights
Download a copy of the 2002-2003 Museum Annual Report (PDF)
Research Locations
Florida Counties
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New Grants
The museum received 26 new grants and contracts worth more than $2.2 million from the following agencies:
- American Association for the Advancement of Science
- Department of Environmental Protection
- Discovery Communications
- Evolving Earth Foundation
- Florida Department of State
- Florida Humanities Council
- Lake County
- Massachusetts Institution of Technology
- Mote Marine Laboratory
- National Foundation on Arts and Humanities
- National Science Foundation
- Nova Southeastern University
- Panamerican Consultants
- South Florida Orchid Society
- U.S. Department of Agricultural and Consumer Services
- U.S. Department of Commerce
- U.S. Department of the Interior
- Wildlife Foundation of Florida
Teaching
- ANG 5172 Seminar in Historical Archaeology, 3 credits
- ANG 4950 Internship in Museum Curation, 3 credits
- ANG 6930 Lessons from Ancient Environments, 3 credits
- ANG 6224 Painted Books of Ancient Mexico, 3 credits
- BOT 5115 Paleobotany, 3 credits
- BOT 6960 Special Topics in Paleobotany, 3 credits
- BOT 5625 Plant Geography, 2 credits
- IDH 3931 Natural Areas: Heritage and Responsibility, 3 credits
- PCB 6605 Principles of Systematic Biology, 4 credits
- WIS 4945C Wildlife Techniques, 2 credits
- ZOO 6927/4926 Herpetology, 4 credits
- ZOO 6927 Integrated Principles, 4 credits
- ZOO 4674 Evolution, 4 credits
- ZOO 5115 Vertebrate Paleontology, 4 credits
- ZOO 6556 Ichthyology, 4 credits
- ZOO 6927 Island Biogeography, 3 credits
- Graduate Committees Chaired: 52
- Independent Studies: 51
Collections & Research Highlights
Archaeology and Ethnography
- Curator William Keegan completed a second year of archaeology on St Lucia in collaboration with Corinne Hofman and Menno Hoogland of the University of Leiden, The Netherlands.
- Other research on Caribbean archaeology by Keegan, his students and colleagues involved prehistoric depletion of animal populations in the Turks and Caicos Islands and detailed analyses of artifacts and faunal remains from Jamaica.
- An ongoing series of popular articles in the magazine Times of the Islands is making the prehistory of the rapidly developing Turks and Caicos Islands much more accessible to residents and visitors alike.
- Kitty Emery, assistant curator of Environmental Archaeology, did field work at the Mayan site of Motul de San Jose, Guatemala, with a focus on how the ancient Maya interacted with plants and animals.
- Along with collection managers Irvy Quitmyer and Sylvia Scudder, archaeobotanist Donna Ruhl and assistant scientist Karen Walker, Emery's Environmental Archaeology team has made great progress in analyzing soils, plants and both marine and terrestrial animals throughout the Caribbean region (Florida, West Indian islands, Middle America). These studies help us understand complex prehistoric changes in climate, sea level, soils, forest cover and animal populations.
- After 28 years of outstanding research and writing about Florida archaeology, curator Jerald Milanich began phased retirement this year. His writing projects have not diminished, however, and we can look forward to a continued flow of books and articles by Milanich well into the future, on topics ranging from Florida's first peoples more than 12,000 years ago (Paleoindians) to historic issues such as the Black Seminole project.
- Collection manager Scott Mitchell began to curate and install the Aucilla River collection of Paleoindian artifacts made of bone, ivory and stone collected by distinguished distinguished research curator David Webb and his students and colleagues.
- Ceramicist Ann Cordell completed investigations of pottery and clay samples from archaeological sites in Volusia, Polk and Lee counties.
- Curator William Marquardt saw completion of our permanent exhibit South Florida People and Environments, based in large part on research that he, Karen Walker, John Worth and colleagues have completed at the museum's Randell Research Center on Pine Island in Lee County. The Randell Research Center received major support this year from the Maple Hill Foundation ($60,000) and the National Endowment for the Humanities ($200,000).
- Susan Milbrath, curator of Latin American Art and Archaeology, published a major review paper on the prehistoric Mayan site of Mayapan in Yucatan, Mexico. She also visited Mayapan in July 2002.
- Along with museum registrar Elise LeCompte, Milbrath oversaw the move of the museum's ethnographic collection from the first floor to improved space on the third floor. This will allow for badly needed expansion of archaeological collections on the first floor of Dickinson Hall, a process that we hope to complete during 2003-04.
- Some 211 objects from the Pearsall Collection of North American Indian Artifacts were put on display at Powell Hall. A grant of $14,920 from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation and the Pew Charitable Trusts allowed 300 artifacts in the Pearsall Collection to be catalogued and digitally photographed.
- Our program in Historical Archaeology continues to investigate early Spanish settlements in Florida (St. Augustine) and the Caribbean. Distinguished research curator Kathleen Deagan received a $48,620 grant from Discovery Communications Inc. to investigate La Navidad, which was Christopher Columbus's 1492 fortress in Haiti. She and collection manager Al Woods surveyed and excavated this site for two months during the summer of 2003.
- A grant of $84,000 from the National Endowment for the Humanities will allow Woods and Deagan to create an on-line digital type-collection for historic artifacts. Digital photography of the ceramics already is completed.
Museum Studies
- Curator Charlotte Porter spearheaded our involvement in the UF Museum Studies Program by teaching courses on exhibitry and museum writing, as well as a course on natural areas for the UF Honors Program.
- Continuing her research on the history of science and exploration in Florida, Porter also was involved with a number of exhibits, lectures and other forms of outreach on this topic around the state. Porter was selected as a founding member of the UF Libraries Leadership Board.
- Along with Wayne King, curator of Herpetology, she edited a major collection of research papers in zooarchaeology to honor Elizabeth Wing, who retired from the museum two years ago but remains active in research.
Botany
- Herbarium curator Norris Williams and collection manager Mark Whitten surveyed orchids in the rugged southwestern part of the Dominican Republic in July 2002.
- Williams received a $300,000 grant from the National Science Foundation to study the evolution of neotropical orchids and their pollinators. Whitten and Williams are world authorities on the relationships of neotropical orchids and related families of plants, based mainly on analyzing DNA sequences.
- Collection manager Kent Perkins has developed an online catalogue of the Herbarium's collections, including more than 1,000 beautiful color photos of 677 species of plants. Studies of the 420,000 specimens in our Herbarium resulted in at least 100 scientific publications by scientists worldwide over the past year.
Molecular Systematics and Evolutionary Genetics Laboratory
- This was the first full year of research in the museum's Laboratory of Molecular Systematics and Evolutionary Genetics, headed by curator Pamela Soltis and professor Douglas Soltis of UF's Botany Department. The Soltises, their many graduate students and post-doctoral fellows, and collection manager Matthew Gitzendanner, had a superb year of scholarly activities. With support from four large, multi-year, multi-investigator grants from the National Science Foundation, they studied genome evolution and diversification in plants.
- The Soltises also continued an exciting collaboration with our Paleobotany curators David Dilcher and Steve Manchester to combine molecular and fossil information to produce the most thorough look ever at the origin and evolution of flowering plants.
- Soltis, Soltis and Gitzendanner also are documenting the genetics of endangered species and populations and using DNA sequences as a tool for understanding hybridization in wild plants.
- With major support from ongoing National Science Foundation grants, the museum's Paleobotany program, spearheaded by graduate research professor David Dilcher and curator Steve Manchester, made great strides in understanding the evolution of flowering plants in North America, Europe and Asia.
- Dilcher, working in the field and laboratory with Chinese colleagues and museum biologist Terry Lott, expanded his study of Archaefructus, the earliest (120 million years old) known flowering plant.
- Manchester investigated early forms (20 to 60 million years old) of familiar trees such as hackberries, willows, birches, sycamores and walnuts, including field work in North Dakota, Wyoming, Montana and Alberta.
- We were delighted to hire Hongshan Wang as Paleobotany collection manager. Wang is an outstanding replacement for the sorely missed David Jarzen.
Invertebrate Zoology
- Jacqueline and Lee Miller, curators of Lepidoptera, had a very busy year preparing for the move in early 2004 of their offices, laboratories and more than one million specimens of butterflies and moths from the Allyn Museum in Sarasota to the museum's new McGuire Center for Lepidoptera and Environmental Research. In spite of this, the Millers found time to complete butterfly surveys in the Bahamas and the Netherland Antilles, as well as their multi-year studies of butterflies in Manatee and Sarasota counties. The Millers are world authorities on two butterfly families, the Nymphalidae (Satyrinae) and Castniidae, new species of which they continue to discover in the field and in museum collections.
- Retired UF Zoology professor Thomas Emmel has been hired as director of the McGuire Center. Combining several major butterfly and moth collections, the McGuire Center will house more than three million specimens and soon become the second largest Lepidoptera collection in the world.
- Invigorated by major new funding and additional staffing, the museum's Malacology program had an outstanding year. Curators Fred Thompson and Gustav Paulay received $224,383 from the National Science Foundation to computerize new collections of tropical and subtropical mollusks.
- Thompson's taxonomic studies of freshwater and land snails included field work in Tennessee and Mexico.
- Paulay received $342,099 from the National Science Foundation to study the biodiversity and evolutionary history of tropical pacific reef invertebrates. Along with graduate and post-doctoral students, Paulay completed marine biodiversity surveys in Taiwan, Palau and Guam. His monograph on marine biodiversity of Guam, published in 2003, sets a new, high standard for biodiversity inventories worldwide.
- The museum's Invertebrate Paleontology collection grew by leaps and bounds this past year, through National Geographic Society-sponsored field efforts by collection manager Roger Portell (in Florida, Jamaica, Bonaire and Curacao) as well as fossils donated by colleagues and volunteers.
- Portell's studies of fossil crabs, sea urchins, brachiopods, sponges and other marine invertebrates are showing how much the overall marine fauna of Florida and the Caribbean has changed over the past 20 million years, even though some types of crabs have in fact changed very little during this time.
- Curator Douglas Jones is building on his stable isotope studies of growth in fossil clams to look at seasonality of archaeological coquina clams in Florida.
Vertebrate Zoology
- Herpetology curators Wayne King and Max Nickerson, along with collection manager Kenneth Krysko, surveyed amphibians and reptiles in Florida in 22 counties from the Panhandle to the Keys. Aside from monitoring the status of native species, Drs. King, Nickerson and Krysko also discovered new populations of exotic (nonnative) toads, frogs, lizards, snakes and turtles, especially in South Florida. This is a potentially troubling situation for the native species.
- Nickerson studied hellbenders (a giant aquatic salamander), turtles and cottonmouths in Missouri, Tennessee and North Carolina.
- The Herpetology collection received a $232,850 grant from the National Science Foundation to be part of a continentwide network of specimen-based information on amphibians and reptiles.
- Associate scientist Richard Franz excavated a number of 30-million year old fossil tortoises in Nebraska and Colorado. He also studied living and fossil gopher tortoises in Florida, as well as extinct giant tortoises in Florida and the West Indian islands.
- Assistant scientist Perran Ross, along with curator Wayne King, runs the Crocodile Specialist Group for the IUCN-World Conservation Union. While serving as a clearinghouse for conservation-related information on the world's 23 species of crocodiles, alligators, caimans and gharials, Ross and his students also engage in original research, such as their current studies of nutrition, growth, pathology, toxins and mortality of alligators in Florida, especially in Lake and Volusia counties. Through a number of public and private sources, Ross received $233,588 in new funding for his programs. He also spoke at a conference in Argentina about the conservation and sustainable use of crocodiles.
- With funding from the National Science Foundation, James Albert, assistant curator of Ichthyology, continued to study freshwater fish of Amazonian Peru along with assistant scientist William Crampton. Aside from surveying and analyzing this very rich though poorly known fish fauna, Drs. Albert and Crampton are describing a number of new species, especially electric fishes.
- The fish collection received another year of curatorial support from the National Science Foundation, through a proposal written by Albert and Florida Program for Shark Research director George Burgess. With a lot of hard, carefully planned work by collection manager Rob Robins and his staff, the NSFfunded curatorial goals are being met and the entire fish collection now is consolidated in a single, expanded space that greatly improves its access to researchers.
- Adjunct curator Larry Page submitted a 5-year grant proposal for $4.7 million to the National Science Foundation to study the world's catfishes, as many as 1,000 species of which remain unknown to science.
Florida Program for Shark Research
- Through major funding ($821,155), especially from the Commercial Shark Fishery Program of the U.S. Department of Commerce, the Florida Program for Shark Research greatly expanded its staff, facilities, research and outreach this year.
- Director George Burgess sent observers aboard commercial fishing vessels to gather biological information to be used in management programs for sharks. In museum laboratories, our shark researchers began a long-term study of age, growth and life history patterns of several large species of coastal sharks.
- The Ichthyology web site, as coordinated by shark research program webmaster Cathy Bester, continues to be the museum's most popular web site, largely because of the International Shark Attack File. The site received nearly 2 million visits during the past year.
- Our Mammalogy program received a major boost with the hiring of David Reed, who received his Ph.D. at Louisiana State University and currently is a post-doctoral fellow at the University of Utah. Reed, who studies the co-evolution of mammals and their external parasites, will begin his career at the museum as assistant curator of Mammalogy in March 2004.
- In the meantime, collection managers Candace McCaffrey and Laurie Wilkins kept the Mammalogy program vigorous through salvaging and preparing a number of very important specimens ranging from bats and native mice to whales and endangered Florida panthers.
- Ornithology curator David Steadman was part of an eight-scientist team that received a 5-year, $2 million grant from the National Science Foundation to study the evolutionary relationships of birds worldwide as part of NSF's "Assembling the Tree of Life" program.
- Collection managers Andrew Kratter and Tom Webber, along with Steadman, led a number of birdwatching trips to exciting places within a 100- mile radius of Gainesville.
- Kratter, Steadman and graduate student Jeremy Kirchman surveyed birds in the rainforests of Vanuatu, a remote and poorly studied island group in the South Pacific.
- Kratter, Steadman and Webber received a $47,477 grant from the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission to expand their statewide network of wildlife rehabilitation clinics from which they salvage bird specimens. Through this program they are developing a database on the sources of bird mortality in Florida, as well as documenting seasonal and geographic data on rare or little known birds across the state.
- Our collections and research in Vertebrate Paleontology had a year of great activity and transition. After 39 years of outstanding scholarship and service, distinguished research curator David Webb retired in June 2003. While it is hard to imagine how our museum, or the last 20 million years' worth of Florida mammals, will get along without Webb, we successfully sought and hired an able replacement. Jonathan Bloch, a Ph.D. and post-doctoral fellow from the University of Michigan, will join the museum as assistant curator of Vertebrate Paleontology in June 2004. Bloch studies the early evolution of primates, bats and insectivores.
- The Vertebrate Paleontology collection grew through field work at Tyner Farm and the LaBelle Highway Pit by collection manager Richard Hulbert, biological scientist Art Poyer and many volunteers. Preparator Russell McCarty and his volunteers worked mainly on fossil rhinos from Tyner Farm and other sites.
- Curator Bruce MacFadden led productive fossil collecting trips to Nebraska and to the Thomas Farm site in Gilchrist County. He also began a project on Miocene fossil mammals from the Panama Canal Zone.
- UF undergraduate student Jeremy Green completed a senior thesis on the paleobiology of the American Mastodon in Florida.