| The Magazine of the CALIFORNIA ACADEMY OF SCIENCES |
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here at the academy Under Our Wings Behind just about every successful scientist there is a mentor. Aristotle had Plato, Charles Darwin had John Stevens Henslow, and E.O. Wilson had William L. Brown. The Academy's Summer Systematics Institute, now in its third year, gives eight undergraduates a chance to get hands-on taxonomic experience under the mentorship of one of the Academy's scientists. Among last summer's crop was Charles Davis, who had just completed his junior year at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, where he had been an engineering major. He discovered botany late in his college career, but took to it with a gusto that launched him to Borneo on a collecting expedition. His internship gave him an equally intense exposure to the taxonomic research in a museum that follows field work. Davis's mentor in the Botany Department was curator Tom Daniel, and they will be publishing the results of their work together on a taxonomic account of the Mexican representatives of Pseuder anthemum, a species of plant in the shrimp-plant family. The study was based on specimens Daniel had collected in Mexico and those borrowed from museums and other plant collections. "It doesn't often happen that an undergraduate's work gets published in a scientific journal," says Daniel. "Most undergraduates don't really understand how science works. This program exposes people interested in biology to what systematics and evolutionary biology are all about." And when they see what it's like to work as a taxonomist, they are often hooked. Davis, for instance, is forgoing his engineering career and has been accepted into Harvard's Ph.D. program in botany. Tony Morosco, a senior at the University of California at Berkeley, was last summer's Wallace Intern. The Wallace Internship, separate from the Systematics Institute but sharing many of the same resources, was established two years ago by San Francisco resident Robert Wallace. Morosco worked with botanist Frank Almeda on a major revision of Marin Flora, a popular text originally published in 1949 by Academy curator John Thomas Howell. In his twelve weeks at the Academy, Morosco computerized plant checklists, updated nomenclature, and added taxonomic keys to both the naturalized and native species of Marin. "He got us launched in the Marin Flora project in a major way," says Almeda, chairman of the Botany Department. "It was great for us, and it gave him an experience not available to many undergraduates." Another intern, Robin Carlson, worked in the Entomology Department, under the tutelage of associate curator Charles Griswold, examining different characters in the structure of silk produced by spiders. By looking closely at the differences between silks under a light microscope, Carlson and Griswold were able to gain some insights into the phylogeny of various spiders. Like Davis, Carlson is coming out of the Institute with a scientific publication under her belt. She and Griswold are describing a new species of long-legged African spider in the genus Phyxelida. Griswold collected the species on a trip to Africa last year and Carlson described it and studied the development of live specimens' spinning organs. Not only do these internships give a valuable boost to young scientists, they also contribute new blood to the pool of future taxonomic researchers. Of the eight young men and women who participated in the summer of 1995, half are currently in graduate school in the fields they studied here. The Summer Systematics Institute, which was established and supported with help from the National Science Foundation, combines a strong dose of traditional taxonomy--a field that is almost impossible to find in today's universities--with exposure to a molecular perspective as well. Fewer students study classical taxonomy these days, says Daniel, partly because of the growing popularity of and the excitement about new molecular techniques that help biologists to determine the genetic relationships among organisms. But while deconstructing DNA has the allure of the cutting edge, classical taxonomic research is needed more now than ever before. Traditional, morphology-based taxonomy and molecular techniques are the Yin and Yang for the classification of organisms. Molecular techniques provide amazingly detailed information about genetic relationships, and morphological studies serve as important checks for molecular results. Also, and at least as important, trained taxonomists know details about the living plants and animals themselves. Without taxonomists to tell us what exists and where it is, land managers and governments don't know where to begin when they try to stem the rising tide of extinctions. "It is a sad irony that just when we so badly need people to study the kinds of life on this planet, so few students are going into taxonomy," says Daniel. "We need more people doing both traditional and molecular work."
The high school students get instruction from the Academy's educational staff, curators, collection managers, and docents. The interns teach science at the community centers from which they were recruited, work as explainers at the Academy's Tide Pool Touch Tank exhibit, and teach programs in the Junior Academy. Some of the interns are also engaged in Academy research projects under scientific mentors of their own. Nineteen-year-old David Wong, for instance, who has been a part of the program for four years, works with Academy Research Director Patrick Kociolek in the diatom collection in the Department of Invertebrate Zoology and Geology. In addition to cataloging and other more mundane technical tasks, Wong contributed to the documentation of what Kociolek suspects is an undescribed diatom from Madagascar. Wong's journal entry for the day they identified the still unnamed diatom is hardly typical for a high school student: "Pat's new light microscope...is beyond anything I had ever seen or hoped to see. Sarah [Spaulding] was using it to catalog some species from Madagascar, and Pat thought he saw a new species. So Sarah started counting pores, caverns, spines, and corinoportulae. I recorded all of the data into the computer. We may be on the verge of discovering a new species! I was right there...actually participating in the discovery of a new species of diatom!" Asked about his academic plans, Wong says, "I am going to become a diatomist." Gordy Slack is an Associate Editor at California Wild. |
Spring 1997
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