CARBONDALE, Ill. -A two-man zoology team from Southern Illinois University at Carbondale has reeled in a National Science Foundation grant to sustain an impressive specimen collection of fishes, amphibians and reptiles. It is the largest such university-held collection in Illinois, Indiana, Missouri and Kentucky.
Team members Ronald A. Brandon, a herpetologist, and Brooks M. Burr, a fish expert, landed the two-year grant, worth nearly $120,000. Funds will enable SIUC to hire a full-time manager to care for the collection-which has flourished under Brandon and Burr.
As zoology professors and active researchers, Brandon and Burr had individually managed specimens in their respective specialties. Those are now pooled.
The combined collection totals 300,000 specimens and represents 2,500 species of fishes, amphibians and reptiles. The critters-from hellbenders to paddlefish-float in jars of liquid preservatives. They're shelved in a newly opened 3,500-square-foot facility, officially known as the Fluid Vertebrate Collection Center, in SIUC's year-old Life Science III building.
"The collection contains unique and valuable specimens used in systematic, ecological and environmental research," explained the researchers in their grant application.
A wealth of information-including each creature's scientific name, and date and location found-is stored with each sample.
Burr compares it to as a 3-D library of fishes and herps.
Undergrads use the collection to learn about ichthyology, herpetology and vertebrate zoology. Graduate students turn to it for information about evolution, species identification and classification, molecular structure and ecology.
State and regulatory agencies deposit some of their own specimens here. And they rely on the facility to provide data on threatened and endangered species that influence land-use plans.
The collection's specimens also are loaned to scientists around the globe.
Eventually, a searchable list of all holdings will be posted on a new web site of the Internet, providing easier access to teachers, natural resource managers and other scientists, said Brandon.
Though pickled, the critters act as stand-ins for the rest of their species.
"There's a lot of biological information we can get from them. We learn about their reproductive cycles and diet, and changes in the environment. And they provide important documentation that animals still occur in a particular place," Brandon explained.
He recently guided a visitor through the collection's herpetology section. Jars of frogs, salamanders, turtles, lizards, crocodiles and snakes lined the shelves. Most hail from Midwestern or mid-southern states. Some were collected as early as the 1880s.
An adjoining area is devoted solely to fish. Glass jars and fishy footlockers brim with an estimated 250,000 specimens amassed by Burr and his students since 1977. There are electric eels, exotic Asian carp that have taken hold in U.S. rivers, and leaf-shaped fishes. About 70 percent of the fish are indigenous to the Midwest, where they're well-known to scientists and anglers.
Burr dipped the others-many of which have never been scientifically described-from the Peruvian leg of the Amazon and rivers in Bolivia. But lack of money and tools prevents scientists in those poorer, developing nations from classifying their nations' rich and abundant aquatic life.
Burr said SIUC's collection will help paint baseline data of South America's biodiversity.
"Identifying and classifying those fishes is absolutely fundamental. Until we know what's there, we won't even know what could potentially be lost from South American fisheries," Burr explained.
SIUC officials expect to hire a collection manager this spring. When the NSF commitment ends in 1999, SIUC's Graduate School will pick up the manager's salary.
