Dear Friends and Colleagues:

We have had much to celebrate over the past few months but also face looming challenges that we must address if the MVZ is to retain its tradition of leadership in research and education on vertebrate diversity.

Since the last letter we have concluded our formal Centennial celebration with 3 final events: an Art Show on Cal’s Homecoming weekend, a prominent display in the refurbished Bancroft Library, and the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) symposium titled “Biogeography, Changing Climates and Niche Evolution.” All were highly successful events. The MVZ Art Show revealed the breadth of uses of our collection – this time in the cultural domain – and was just fascinating. Our own Bob Stebbins, an accomplished artist as well as a naturalist and herpetologist, was highlighted, as were many others.  We were delighted to welcome Milton Hildebrand, whose textbook and magnificently prepared anatomical specimens have underpinned instruction in comparative vertebrate anatomy for decades. The NAS symposium, organized by David Wake, Liz Hadly, and David Ackerly, was an intellectual feast. Presentations, from global leaders in the field, reviewed the development of the niche concept from Grinnell on and its explored applications to fundamental questions in ecology, evolution, and conservation. Look for the upcoming special issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) which will include several papers from MVZers.

So our Centennial celebrations are over, but we are not resting on our laurels. Rather, we are moving forward to protect and develop the collections and to advance our missions in research and education. Recent achievements include the following:

• The award of The Freedman Chair in Undergraduate Education to Eileen Lacey, a previous winner of the campus Distinguished Teaching Award.
• A substantial grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF) to move our globally significant frozen tissue collection from aging, energy guzzling -80°C walk-in freezers into liquid nitrogen storage.
• Another NSF grant for historians and philosophers of science to study the development of the MVZ program in the context of changing ecological and evolutionary science disciplines.
• Other awards such as Dissertation Improvement and PreDoctoral grants for our graduate students, funding for biodiversity analysis of the Atlantic rainforests of Brazil, and additional support from the State to extend the Grinnell Resurvey Project and to develop infrastructure at Hastings.
• A healthy flow of high-quality publications; some 80 papers from 2008 to the present. Most are, appropriately, in core disciplinary journals. But even just those from mainstream journals such as Science (4), PNAS (4), and Proceedings of the Royal Society (3) demonstrate the importance of our collections for addressing broad ranging questions about vertebrate diversity – including discovering, predicting and documenting changes in vertebrate biodiversity at multiple scales, resolving long-standing problems in avian relationships, and understanding biomechanics of sound production in hummingbirds (see Publications).
• Continued vitality of the MVZ’s contribution to education: the award-winning Undergraduate Apprentice Program (URAP), the successes (and graduations!) of our graduate students, and our great group of postdocs –some of whom are moving to faculty positions.
• An impressive international breadth of researchers, including students from South and Central America, Africa, Indonesia, Australia and Europe.  

The collections themselves continue to grow at a spectacular rate. From 2007 to the present there have been over 300 accessions comprising more than 17,000 specimens, with substantial recent additions from California, Africa and meso-America.  In addition, large collections from meso-America (all taxa) and Indonesia (herps) wait accessioning. This growth underscores the overall vitality of the program, as well as our strong focus on both documenting diversity and understanding species responses to climate change.  I will write more about this in a future issue.

As important as growth is how we use the collections and share knowledge about them.  The MVZ is recognized internationally for developing Biodiversity Informatics through its leadership of distributed data-portals (MaNIS, HerpNET, ORNIS, and now VertNET), development of georeferencing software (BioGeomancer), and development of IT tools to support field collecting and genomic analysis (Moorea Biocode Project).  These developments are improving the quality of our data, our capacity to share it publicly, and the ability to use it in advanced biodiversity research. A key to this is the continuing development of our own database, Arctos, which is now a fully collaborative venture between the MVZ, the University of Alaska Museum, the Museum of Southwestern Biology at University of New Mexico, and the Museum of Comparative Zoology at Harvard. Our staff curators, lead by Carla Cicero, have worked long and hard over the past year to clean up our data, protect it, and serve it more efficiently via Arctos. It is now possible to connect specimens, images, vocal recordings, genomic data, and field-notes digitally, enhancing our research, education, and outreach functions.  The possibilities make my head spin.

But there’s more.  Having made substantial progress connecting georeferenced specimens with environmental data our next major challenge is to exploit the potential of next-generation sequencing (NGS) technology - this might be referred to as “Biodiversity Genomics.”  For decades the MVZ has been an early adopter of advances in genetic analysis: first with allozymes and cytogenetics (proteins and chromosomes), then RFLPs (the first form of genetic testing based on DNA), and then PCR and DNA sequencing.  This is the next quantum leap, and there is great opportunity to apply next-generation sequencing to improve analyses of lineage history, speciation processes, and responses to recent environmental change.  Scaling-up from a few loci to thousands poses interesting computational and analytical challenges, but our stellar group of evolutionary genomicists in IB/MVZ is ready and willing.  Watch this space.

Even as our program flourishes we face significant challenges stemming from California’s budget woes. Our request, joint with IB, to recruit a Vertebrate Evolutionary Biologist and the  5th Faculty Curator is still pending with campus administration; however, the campus overall is cutting back severely on faculty searches.  We have also been asked to plan for a 20% permanent cut to our state funding, making some 40% reductions in the past decade.  With some belt-tightening, and thanks to the generosity of past donors, we are able to maintain our program, at least for now.  One exception is the Hastings Program in long term ecology and conservation, where we have had to reduce the Research Zoologist position formerly occupied by Walt Koenig (now at Cornell).

Of necessity we are now engaged in fundraising to rebuild the Hastings Program, and also to sustain the collections and build our exciting program on the Berkeley campus. Thus, the “MVZ Centennial Campaign,” which focuses on supporting (i) development of the collections and their use in research, education, and outreach; (ii) graduate student research, including international fellowships; (iii) our undergraduate program; and (iv) research in Biodiversity Genomics. I ask you, our friends and alums, to consider giving to the MVZ as and when you can (see http://mvz.berkeley.edu/Giving_Opportunities.html). The future of the Museum depends on it.

Craig Moritz, Director
June 20, 2009