THE FIELD MUSEUM 2012 ANNUAL REPORT TO THE BOARD OF TRUSTEES COLLECTIONS AND RESEARCH Office of Collections and Research, The Field Museum 1400 South Lake Shore Drive Chicago, IL 60605-2496 USA Phone (312) 665-7811 Fax (312) 665-7806 http://www.fieldmuseum.org - This Report Printed on Recycled Paper - 1 We wanted to commandeer a page of this report to thank Lance Grande for his years of service and leadership as Senior Vice President and Head of Collections & Research. Lance has served in this capacity for more than eight years, through some very trying financial times, and has done so with ingenuity and good humor. In spite of his heavy administrative duties, Lance maintained high scientific productivity and an ongoing commitment to education. In 2009 he co-authored Gems and Gemstones: Timeless Natural Beauty of the Mineral World, a gorgeous, popular-market companion volume to the renovated Grainger Hall of Gems. The next year he published a massive volume resulting from untold years of research, An Empirical Synthetic Pattern Study of Gars (Lepisosteiformes) and Closely Related Species, Based Mostly on Skeletal Anatomy: The Resurrection of Holostei. This study, together with his earlier volume on the Amiid fishes, recalibrates the morphological base data for evolutionary studies of the ray-finned fishes, and serves as a model for future evolutionary research. At present, he is putting the finishing touches on another popular-oriented book, this one on the Fossil Butte Member of the Green River Formation in Wyoming, which boasts an amazing array of beautifully preserved plants and animals—“snapshots in stone” of a 52-million-year-old tropical lake community. Lance has worked the quarries of Fossil Butte for almost three decades, and for the past eight summers the locality has also been the site of his course, “Stones and Bones,” a paleontology field school for advanced placement high school students, from the University of Chicagoʼs Graham School. We expect that he will be returning to Fossil Butte for many more years to come (and with a mind unburdened by administration). Lanceʼs long track record of research has made him among the most prominent of U.S. paleontologists. Last year his scientific productivity earned him a prestigious award from his peers: the American Society of Ichthyologists and Herpetologists recently recognized him with the Robert H. Gibbs Jr. Memorial Award for Excellence in Systematic Ichthyology, which is awarded for “an outstanding body of published work in systematic ichthyology.” And in recognition of his service to The Field Museum, Museum President Richard Lariviere and the Board of Trustees appointed Lance to the position of Distinguished Service Curator. We congratulate Lance on this honor, and again extend our deepest thanks for his service and collegiality over the many years. The Collections & Research Staff 2 CONTENTS 2012 Annual Report ................................................................................................................................... 4 Collections and Research Committee of the Board of Trustees ................................................................. 6 Encyclopedia of Life Committee and Repatriation Committee of the Board of Trustees ............................. 7 Staff List ...................................................................................................................................................... 8 Publications ................................................................................................................................................ 13 Active Grants ............................................................................................................................................. 40 Conferences, Symposia, Workshops and Invited Lectures ........................................................................ 57 Museum and Public Service ...................................................................................................................... 66 Fieldwork and Research Travel ................................................................................................................. 77 Public Education and Outreach ................................................................................................................. 83 Higher Education ....................................................................................................................................... 99 Training Programs .................................................................................................................................. 109 Collections and Research Interns ............................................................................................................ 115 Resident Graduate Students .................................................................................................................... 118 Collections and Research Volunteers ..................................................................................................... 119 Honorary Appointments ............................................................................................................................ 121 Collection Statistics .................................................................................................................................. 131 Biodiversity Synthesis Center .................................................................................................................. 136 Fieldiana .................................................................................................................................................. 137 Library ...................................................................................................................................................... 138 The Pritzker Laboratory for Molecular Systematics and Evolution ........................................................... 140 Scanning Electron Microscope ................................................................................................................ 142 Scholarship Committee ........................................................................................................................... 143 3 COLLECTIONS AND RESEARCH – 2012 ANNUAL REPORT Collections-based research has been the core scientific mission of The Field Museum since its founding in 1893, and “Collections & Research” has been the name of the division housing the core scientific departments dedicated to that mission since 1983—the year I started here as a curator, in fact (with a shift to “Academic Affairs” for a few years). Before that the research arm of the Museum was called “Science & Education,” and was grouped with the Exhibits and Education Departments. In 2013, the name will change again—to, interestingly enough, “Science & Education” —in conjunction with a fundamental restructuring within the Museum. But research, grounded in collections, will continue to be one of the most important strengths of this institution. Looking back over 25 years I am struck by the continuity between the scientific work then and now, but also by the amazing increase in productivity. In the late 1970s and earlier ʻ80s it was typical to see at most 100 publications per year from the curators and scientific staff. In 2012 our scientists (including a markedly smaller curatorial faculty) produced nearly 270 scientific publications, ranging in subject from CT scanning of Egyptian bird mummies, to DNA barcoding of fungi, to the beer-consumption practices of the ancient Wari culture of Peru, to the sharing of host plants by competing ant species. And of course many of these papers identified new species: a theropod dinosaur, a few shrew-mice, a myrtle tree, a dozen- odd rove beetles, several bats and snakes, and over 100 lichens. C&R scientists described 149 species and other taxa new to science in 2012, putting the number published in the past 22 years over 1,300. Most of our studies would seem familiar to our colleagues of a quarter century ago, although methods like DNA barcoding would surely intrigue them. Molecular-based research into evolution and populations has been going on at the Field since the late 1970s, but the pace and scope of that work, thanks to automated sequencing, has increased by incredible leaps. Likewise, the chemical investigations carried out in Anthropologyʼs Elemental Analysis Lab have unlocked previously inaccessible information about how artifacts were created and where they came from, and CT-scanning technology has enabled “virtual dissection” of cultural objects that would have amazed our predecessors. New technologies solve old mysteries, breed new questions, fuel innovative work, and increase the productivity of our scientists. But while new technologies and methods account for some of this increase in productivity, I think the deep passion and commitment of our scientists account for a great deal of it as well. Their commitment is obvious by their publications, their broad involvement in their fields, and by their dogged pursuit of grants. The scientists of C&R have not only generated, but also funded, much of the original scientific research produced at the Museum. Grants are the engine that drives this research. Scientists in C&R received more than $3.7 million in new awards in 2012 from the National Science Foundation, Institute of Museum and Library Service, Marie Curie Foundation, National Geographic Society, Negaunee Foundation, and other sources.