Featured Specimens
These Philippine vipers were collected as part of a grant-funded program to document all vertebrates and their parasites across the 7,000 islands of the Philippines. They are a part of the Biodiversity Institute's herpetology collection of 333,000 frogs, toads, salamanders, snakes, lizards and turtles, one of the best such collections in the world.
The Andean cock-of-the-rock, Rupicola peruvianus (left), is found only in the Andes of South America; the Guianan cock-of-the-rock, Rupicola rupicola, lives only in the Guianas, adjacent Venezuela and extreme northern Brazil. Both mate in an unusual way: Males congregate in groups and perform elaborate, complex displays to attract females.
Biodiversity Institute collections include many kinds of preserved material, including skeletal and tissue, fluid-preserved and dried, among others. The ornithology collection includes material such as these brown-flecked turkey vulture egg shells.
In natural history collections, every specimen in the collection's “library” is unique. Researchers collect many examples of a species because differences appear across time, age, sex and region, among other factors.
Close-up of a Hercules Beetle, Dynastes hercules: While many specimens in the collections came from distant places, including this exotic-looking beetle from Nicaragua, researchers also discover and describe species in Kansas that are new to science. In 2010, entomology student Taro Eldredge found a new species, Myrmedonota heliantha, in the Baker wetlands just south of Lawrence — the only place where the tiny carnivorous beetle is known to exist.
This Chilean Round Ray, Urotrygon chilensis, has been treated with a process called clearing and staining. To clear and stain an animal specimen, scientists first make the soft tissue translucent, then apply dyes to stain bones and hard tissue red and cartilage blue. The result allows close examination of skeletal details.
Close-up of a Chilean Round Ray, Urotrygon chilensis. The specimen is on loan to the KU Natural History Museum from the Field Museum in Chicago.
Orchid bee, Exaerate smaragdina: Orchid bees lay their eggs in the nests of similar species. Stealing nest space saves them the trouble of building nests of their own or collecting pollen to feed their young.
Holotype specimens: When scientists discover and name a new species, they must describe the characteristics that distinguish it from all other species. Importantly, they designate what is called a “holotype” — the specimen that is the standard-bearer for the new species. The herpetology collection includes about 600 holotypes, each one representing a new species discovered by a KU scientist.
Featured Specimens
Visitors to the KU Natural History Museum see extinct mosasaurs from the Kansas chalk beds, the historic Panorama and many other exhibits spread across four floors. But less than 1 percent of the Biodiversity Institute’s collections of animals, plants and fossils is on display. The photos in this gallery were shot by Brian Goodman for a forthcoming article about the Biodiversity Institute's collections that will be published in KU Giving. To support the Biodiversity Institute, please visit KU Endowment.
