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NEWS
| february 18, 2004
Shelf
Life
The College of Science’s
reptiles and amphibians pack their scales and move to a larger researching
complex
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| The Shorthorn: Mark Roberts |
| Amphibians like these frogs
share shelf space with other animals in the Life Sciences
Building basement. These jars and hundreds like them will
be moved to another on-campus site near Maverick Stadium. |
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By John
Anderson
Contributor to The Shorthorn
Thousands of snakes, lizards and toads call the Life Sciences Building
basement home.
Some students don’t know of the hoard of preserved creatures
that sit in a dark storage room on rows of shelves, but others are
eager to learn what they can about it.
“I’d want to know where it is so I could get at least
15 miles away from it,” broadcast news senior Alan Young said.
Next week, however, students may get a chance to see the collection
when it’s carried up from the basement to be relocated to
a new annex.
The preserved specimens — mostly snakes, toads, and turtles
— make up the Collection of Vertebrates, which will be moved
to 910 S. Davis St., near Maverick Stadium, over the next couple
months, beginning Monday, Biology Department Chair James Campbell
said.
The annex’s planning and construction, designed specifically
for the collection, took place over the last year and a half. It
was built to consolidate all collection-related activities in one
area, to free up valuable space in the Life Sciences Building and
to address any safety concerns, he said.
The open space is planned to be used by the College of Science for
a new facility: the Converging Biotechnology Center.
The move will be “delicate and deliberate” because “if
something got out of order, how would we find it?” curator
Paul Ustach said.
Moving office supplies will begin toward the end of this week. Then,
the shelving that supports hundreds of jars of samples must be disassembled
before specimens can be moved, Dr. Campbell said.
The college’s reptiles and amphibians collection is one of
the largest in Texas, Dr. Ustach said. It’s important to researchers
who may have discovered a new species in the field because they
can compare their finds to the collection, which is cataloged by
region, he said.
Biology professor Eric Smith said this collection is useful not
only for taxonomy, the classification of species, but also for the
study of ecology and development of species.
The Collection of Vertebrates has been housed in the basement of
the Life Sciences Building since being founded in 1956.
The move is necessary as it expands beyond the available space because
this collection is one of the fastest growing, Ustach said. The
collection is made up of about 56,000 amphibians and 52,000 reptiles.
“We get as many species as we can,” Dr. Smith said.
The collection includes many examples of the same species to conduct
thorough research, Smith said. However, researchers try not to sample
more than what would be needed to protect the animals’ habitats,
he added.
Researchers in bio diversity try to further minimize the detriment
to nature with some creative specimen gathering techniques.
Night-driving is the collection of samples found on the road. In
developed areas, sometimes an animal is hit and killed but is still
in a good enough condition to benefit researchers, Ustach said.
Smith, who has done field studies in Mexico, Indonesia, Guatemala
and Columbia, found an undescribed species of vipers on one such
trip, as well as the first known species of completely aquatic toads
on this side of the world. He solicited help from local workers.
“In Guatemala, I’ve had people on bulldozers help us,”
he said. “Basically, while they are building roads to develop
areas, they collect one or two specimens for me as a pastime.”
CORRECTION
In this article, Biology Department Chair
Jonathan Campbell’s name was misstated.
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