Dear subscribers,
As the summer heat revs up, so does museum visitor attendance. On Juneteenth alone, the museum had around 300 visitors exploring our galleries! Seeing an increase in youth groups and family visits and knowing our mission of studying past and present life on Earth continues to reach new audiences brings the BI/NHM community great joy, which is why we'd like to express our sincerest gratitude to the Lawrence community for voting for the museum in the 2024 Best of Lawrence awards. The museum is a finalist in the Place to Take an Out-of-Towner (free attraction) category. Thank you to all who voted and continue to support our mission by visiting, donating, and being a loyal member.
Lastly, we are ecstatic to announce that Dr. Nico Franz began his role as Krishtalka Director of the BI/NHM on July 1. We are thrilled to have Nico join the KU and Lawrence community and look forward to his leadership and achieving great things together.
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Sincerely,
Natalie Vondrak
Communications Coordinator
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Water is Life
with K-POP!
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Sunday, July 21
2:00-4:00 PM
KU Natural History Museum
Dyche Hall
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Join us and our friends
K-POP, the Kansas Postdoctoral Outreach Project, for awesome science experiments and activities about how water shapes our planet and nearly every aspect of our lives.
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| Science on Tap
with Dr. Jorge Soberón
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Wednesday, July 24
7:30-8:30 PM
Free State Brewing Company
636 Mass St., Lawrence, KS
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Enjoy a pint of beer while learning about the latest scientific discoveries. This month, Dr. Jorge Soberón will use history and science to explain how a tiny cactus-dwelling insect became a global commodity.
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| Pop Up Science: Popping Up Again
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Saturday, July 27
2:00-4:00 PM
KU Natural History Museum
Dyche Hall
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Revisit our all-time favorite science engagement activities from the past few years during this month's Pop Up Science. Activities involve testing radioactivity, hissing cockroaches, ancient flowers, mammal skulls, and more!
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Curating Collections: Ornithology
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Did you know there are over 10 million specimens and 2 million
archaeological artifacts in the Biodiversity Institute's worldwide collection?
And each one has a story just waiting to be shared with you!
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Dwarf Kingfishers
Tiny, jewel-like kingfishers of the genus Ceyx are common residents of the tropical archipelagos of the SW Pacific. Populations on each island differ in plumage color, bill color, and size, and the cause of this incredible variation has fascinated biologists for decades. Extensive fieldwork in the region by staff and students in the KU Ornithology Division has assembled the most comprehensive modern sampling of the group, allowing the first genomic analysis of variation in the group (DeRaad et al. in press).
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KU Researcher Rafe Brown Receives Fulbright Award to the Philippines
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Rafe Brown, professor of ecology & evolutionary biology and curator-in-charge of the KU Herpetology Division, has received a Fulbright U.S. Scholar Award to travel to the Philippines to study biodiversity. The award will allow Brown to spend a year sampling amphibians and reptiles within a stretch of pristine tropical forest.
Photo credit: Rafe Brown
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Implementing Specimen Management Plans
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A special report in the journal BioScience provides guidance on implementing a specimen management plan for research proposals. Lead author Andrew Bentley, collection manager of the KU Ichthyology Division, and Nico Franz, Krishtalka Director of the KU BI/NHM were contributing authors on the article and are a part of the Biodiversity Collections Network (BCoN), a NSF-funded group that published the report.
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Revisiting the Expeditions and Collections of Charles D. Bunker
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This summer, biologists in the KU terrestrial vertebrate divisions have been resurveying sites visited by early KU biologist Charles D. Bunker to understand how faunas have changed over the past century. Their latest expedition took them to western Kansas in Cheyenne and Trego Counties.
Photo Credit: Kin Onn Chan
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Honoring Director Jorge Soberón
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After three and half years of outstanding leadership, Jorge Soberón concluded his term as director of the KU Biodiversity Institute and Natural History Museum in late June. Soberón is a University Distinguished Professor of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology and a senior scientist in biodiversity modeling who has used his role and expertise to educate and inspire countless staff, students, and museum visitors during his time as director. On behalf of the entire BI/NHM team, thank you, Jorge, for your time and commitment.
Image courtesy of Christine Metz Howard
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Collections & Conservation
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Thanks to the support of captive breeding programs and collections based research, scientists can better understand and track diseases impacting black-footed ferrets. Learn more about how genetically-informed conservation efforts benefits this species by visiting the museum's exhibit Collections & Conservation.
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The KU Natural History Museum gift shop has plenty of fun, educational toys to keep kids occupied during the summer. These Pocket Fidget Friends are colorful creatures with a pleasing texture and are only $3.00 each. (Not available on the online store).
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Staff & Student Spotlights
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Stay up-to-date with current activities and events by following us
on your favorite social media channels.
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Thank you to postdoctoral researcher Marlon Cobos Cobos and Exhibits Specialist Cameron Pratte for suiting up and safely removing a swarm of bees outside Dyche Hall last month. The swarm came from the Bee Tree exhibit on the museum's 6th floor.
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Last month, students in the KU herpetology field course spent two weeks learning how to conduct basic scientific field research with reptiles and amphibians. The course was taught by EEB Ph.D. student Mark Herr and Curator of Herpetology Rich Glor.
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KU Mammalogy toured the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service's Black-Footed Ferret Conservation Center. They saw captive-bred ferrets preparing to be released into the wild and saw the first ever black-footed ferret clone!
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| Meet our new student hourly employee, Kalani Rio. Kalani is responsible for maintaining and caring for our Bugtown and Paleo Garden exhibits.
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Fossil Friday at the KU Natural History Museum
Friday, August 30
10:00 AM-1:00 PM
Dyche Hall, 1345 Jayhawk Blvd
Attention all incoming freshmen and international students! Visit the KU Biodiversity Institute and Natural History Museum on Friday, August 30, during Hawk Week for a special outreach event. You can grab a selfie with a dinosaur, see plant and animal fossils, and pick up some fun freebies outside Dyche Hall.
Hawk Week is a 10-day, event-intensive introduction and orientation to campus life at KU for incoming freshmen and international students only.
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