ANN ARBOR (WWJ) - The University of Michigan has slithered into a world record with additions to its reptile exhibit, which experts are saying could open new doors in biological research.
Oregon State University sent over 100 boxes of preserved reptiles and amphibians to the University of Michigan Museum of Zoology last month. The University of Michigan now has roughly half a million specimens with this acquisition, according to museum curators, which means U-M now holds the largest collection of snakes in the world.
The university’s Research Museums Center, which is made up of the zoology, paleontology, anthropological archaeology and herbarium collections, is one of the largest facilities of any U.S. university. It houses the collections, laboratories, specimen records and libraries in the same building.
The collection is not open to the public, but researchers from around the world and University of Michigan undergraduates are able to study specimens in person. Biologists are able to focus on important evolutionary questions with the support of the exhibits.
"The University of Michigan Museum of Zoology is one of the only museums capable of supporting a collection of this size," evolutionary biologist Dan Rabosky, a curator at the University of Michigan Museum of Zoology and professor in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, said of the Oregon State specimens. "It takes lots of resources to integrate and maintain collections like this and to make the specimens and their data available to the global research community.”
The approximately 45,000 specimens from Oregon State are the result of the life's work of recently retired professors Stevan Arnold and Lynne Houck. Arnold received a doctorate from Michigan in 1972 and used the collection at the university for his dissertation.
"We have a great scientific partnership with the University of Michigan. Although Oregon State maintains and values its core reptile and amphibian collection, we were no longer able to maintain Steve and Lynne's specialty collection," said Oregon State entomologist David Maddison, who helped coordinate the transfer.
Maddison said that Michigan was the clear choice to house the specimens after contacting multiple universities.
Experts say the majority of the new specimens are garter or water snakes and woodland or dusky salamanders. The collection also includes around 30,000 frozen tissue samples.
"These are two powerhouse snake collections coming together to become something entirely new—a super-collection capable of doing things together that neither one could have done alone," said Davis Rabosky, an associate professor in the University of Michigan Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology.
Researchers say this exhibit will allow for a deeper study of biodiversity than was previously available. Some of the specimens appear to be hybrids that are the result of different species mating, which may allow a clearer understanding of the genes that keep species isolated.